If your New Year resolutions never seem to stick then it’s time to try a new approach.
A bit like an Eton Mess (click here for the edible recipe), this habit enhancing recipe mixes up lots of ‘flavours’ and has an end result that can never fail.
Step 1: Take 12 areas of your life that you’d like to spend more time on, improve upon or change.
Step 2: Allocate each area to one of this year’s 12 months and then simply allow it to flavour your decisions throughout that month.
January could be about doing more activity with friends and family. February, about making better use of your time. March, about trying new foods. April could be the month to be more organised. May, to put energy into a new hobby and in June, to sleep better/more. In July you could focus on avoiding the winter blues by being more active outside and getting regular doses of Vitamin D and on you’d go.
Step 3: When opportunities present themselves, you make decisions in line with that month’s flavour, to the extent you can. For instance, in July instead of training inside at the gym you might do the club’s outside lunch time bootcamps.
There’s no right or wrong as to how you make it roll but here’s some tips that we’ve found have helped bring it together sweetly.
- Choose just one area per month to focus on.
- Write 12 of them onto your calendar or into your diary as a reminder.
- Choose areas of your life that are a mixture of ‘should do’ stuff and fun stuff that excites you, but which you never seem to get around to doing.
- Tie your choices in with the months that are most conducive to doing well at them
- It’s okay to change or swap monthly choices around.
- It’s okay not to write to do lists for each month’s choice* but you can collect ideas for each one and write them down and stick them into the relevant month.
- Re-enforce your good decisions by mentally acknowledging them with a ‘I Rock’ type of a statement and a pat on the back. Our habit making brain responds well to rewards even if they are only verbal.
*There’s no need to write a detailed list of what you intend to do each day or week in relation to your 12 choices unless that ‘works’ for you.
All the best.