No and Yes: New Year

Hat tip to The Simple Show for giving me the No and Yes framework. Also, if you haven't seen The Lazy Genius post on How to Set Goals Like a Normal Person, I highly recommend it. I found it after I had set my plan for this year, but there's wisdom for future years.

Things I say No to about the new year

Staying up until midnight

I'm a lark, not a night owl, and I've finally realized that doesn't magically change on New Year's Eve. Staying up until midnight inevitably leads to me starting the new year feeling sluggish, which totally loves the clean slate, fresh start feeling I so appreciate.

Strict resolutions

I struggle with any goal that requires me to do something every day. I'm just not able to give myself grace when I stumble, as I know I will. Strict resolutions ensure that I will feel like a failure by about January 3.

Lots of resolutions

As I've written before, I used to plan to completely reform all aspects of my life each January 1. Eventually, I clued into the reality that I was setting the same resolutions every year, so clearly this wasn't working.

Not doing anything

There have been years when I haven't set any resolutions or intentions or goals at all for the new year, and although I'm confident that was the right call for those years, it's not the right call for this year.

Word of the Year

I tried it, honestly I did. For 2017, my word (OK, phrase) was Mindful Order. I did spend part of the year working on order and mindfulness, but overall I found having a word for the year insufficiently inspiring. When I look back on 2017, I am dissatisfied with my personal growth. There's the possibility that I just picked a bad word, but 2017 was the most successful of my attempts to have a word of the year, so I'm comfortable declaring this method is not effective for me right now.

Things I say Yes to about the new year

Making it fun

I'm a regular listener of Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and on episode 149, Gretchen and Elizabeth talk about their "18 for 2018" lists--eighteen things they are planning to do in 2018. I thought this was a great cure for the dissatisfaction I felt with 2017, so I jumped on the bandwagon. My 18 things range from the ambitious to the silly, but I'm looking forward to all of them. (OK, except one. I am only looking forward to having painted the laundry room, not actually painting it.)

Being very selective about habits

In addition to my 18 things, I am trying to add two new habits--one daily and one weekly--to my life this year. Two. Not twelve. And unlike some of my past habit goals, these are actually goals I want to accomplish, not goals I want to want to accomplish. Big difference.

Focusing on the end of the year

In the past, when I set resolutions about habits, my thinking was always that I wanted to execute the new behavior perfectly from January 1 on. This year, I am focused on making the desired behaviors habitual by the end of the year. I've already missed one day in my daily habit. In the past, that would have discouraged me. Now, I just think, "Well, I've done this five days more than I did last week. I'm benefiting from those five days."