I heard on the radio that January 19th is the day when many of us give up on New Year’s resolutions. It is less than 3 weeks! This made me think about my own resolutions and ways of keeping them. To be honest, this year already started kind of rough for me – for the first week I was continuing doing nothing and waiting for the inspiration. 19 days are simply not enough! This is when I may begin starting to think about my resolutions, not give up on them already! Below are some tips and pointers I could think of to help myself meeting my New Year’s resolutions.

• Don’t aim for perfection. As this year started not on a good happy note from the first day, with small but annoying things like accidentally breaking things, I did not have a chance to aim for the perfect year. This is in comparison to the previous years, where I believed that the smooth beginning was the requirement to meet my resolutions. However, this year continues being rough and weird, and I just accepted it with its imperfections as I continue slowly but surely moving forward and work towards my goals
• Inspiration may or may not be there. But it does not mean you should wait for the inspiration and do nothing. Try looking for or creating the environment that will help push yourself forward. For example, if your resolution is to sleep better, enough inspiration could be cleaning up your bedroom or making your bed stand more organized or adding candles that get you into calm mood. If your resolution is to go to GYM more often, create a fun playlist or watch interesting TV series when you exercise.
• Invest in small things that keep you motivated. For example, one of my resolutions was to drink more water, so the first thing I did on my way to work was to purchase a reusable cup with straw from Starbucks. I love this brand so this will make me more likely to drink water, plus it is easy to take water to the meetings and it fits more water than regular plastic water bottle. Think about small things that will make meeting your resolutions easier and add them to your life.
• Start small and make it part of your regime. I used to be very ambitious, whether it comes to writing or exercising – I would like quick impressive results after the first time.  I would plan to write a book in 3 months, lose weight after 2 days in GYM, and so on…however, I realized that this is not possible, and that good things that are long-lasting, have an impact and just have good quality do take time to achieve, to build, to develop…I do not want to write a book overnight and then have it in such a bad way that no one, including me, would be interested to read it. So, I accepted that it is better to write a page few times a week than do nothing for months while keeping my ambitious timeline of 3 months. I also noticed as I engage in it and write for fun, without having a timeline above my head, I tend to see it less as work and more as something I enjoy doing. It has to become a part of my lifestyle and my regime to stick.
• Reflect and monitor your progress. I love the idea of writing and journaling but I can never find the time for it. However, I’ve introduced one thing into my life that keeps me accountable to myself – once a week I would go into the app called WeNote and just write a list of things I did this week. Whether it is things at home that I found time to organize, few pages to write for my book, a new course I took or a fun/social activity I went to, writing this down feels like my life 1) has a purpose 2) I am doing something 3) makes me anticipate writing this by end of the week so I try to do something useful and related to my goals/resolutions
• Do not give up! You cannot beat someone who never gives up!