NEW Year’s resolutions are that pivotal chance each person gets to finally kickstart the habits they’ve wanted to develop or cut off that didn’t happen tomorrow, next week, next month, or yesterday. Before letting a drop of that “new year, new me” motivation go to waste, sit down and list down all those major goals you want to base 2020 on and start hacking them down into bite-sized and achievable pieces. To make it easier for you, Zup has consolidated a list of the most common resolutions (and a few tips) to help spark your inspiration.
1. Healthy Living: diet, exercise, fitness, wellness and weight-loss
You want to lose weight. Gain weight. Get fit. Get abs. Eat right. Go vegan. Whatever it is, the bottom line is that you want to get in shape by being more active and having healthier eating habits. This resolution is always at the top of the list of resolutions—where majority of people always enter the New Year with it in mind. It’s sound simple when you think about it and is easy enough when you start—type in “How to Lose Belly Fat 2020” and “Diet Meal Plan” then hit the search button on Google or even sign up for your nearest gym membership. Starting is actually one of the easier parts, keeping it up throughout the year (or even for a month) is the kicker.
Tip: Find a program or start a diet that gives you steady results and is easy to stick to in the long run. Fads don’t last, lifestyle changes do. Some people tend to go on yo-yo’s where they do a drastic change then relapse in the middle. Maybe it’s better to start small until it develops into a habit you don’t even notice you’re doing anymore then add another healthy one. One day you’ll wake up and realize that you’ve changed your whole lifestyle without even noticing it!
2. Self-discipline: responsibility, organization, punctuality and work ethic
You want to “fix your life” by being more organized. Being on time. Being responsible. Working harder. Come a new year, people always want to get a grip on themselves—somehow making them feel like they can take control of what’s to come. Although there is no way to possibly control what happens to you in 2020, you can always control what you do and the steps you take to achieve your goals. But how?
Tip: Stop procrastinating. A lot of the time, one of the biggest things that bar us from achieving what we want to achieve comes from within ourselves. It’s that desire or temptation to relax and distract ourselves from the stressful work stuff by doing something fun. Procrastination is a rabbit hole—once you fall into it the first time, it’s hard to climb out of there. You’ll first click that YouTube video that leads to others like it until you cross over to the dark side and only realize you’ve crossed over when you look up and see that it’s 3 a.m. and you have work or school at 8 a.m. Nice... not! Cut that out.
If you want or have to do something, start doing it now. Future-you will thank you later.
3. Money and Finances: earn, save and invest
Money makes the world go round, they say. Another usual goal-setting theme each New Year has everything to do with finances. Earn more money. Invest more money. Save more money. Money, money, money! The desire to increase assets never fails to manifest in many a regular human being. When you don’t have money, you want it. When you have money, you want more of it. But it seems like there just isn’t any to go around.
Tip: To earn more money, it’s called a hustle, sweetheart. Find different revenue streams. Even if you have a job now and can somehow spare a little time to, you can find a side-job or work online. If you don’t have time, you might want to do something that earns a little slower but is less time-consuming—something like investing in stocks (I honestly don’t know how to do this yet but hear it’s a thing). Take note that all these things do require research. Money isn’t a “basta-basta” matter. But worry not! With the internet as your oyster, you’re free to research your best options online. If not, you can even ask someone you trust to help you.
You can also research different ways to save money. But there’s this principle going around the internet lately (I have yet to try) that sounds really interesting. It’s called the 50/30/20 budget (see the other article in this ‘Zup issue). Here’s how it goes:
a.) Start with your take-home salary or allowance.
b.) Commit no more than 50% of that to needs and fixed expenses, like rent, gas, etc.
c.) Use 20% of it for savings and debt repayment.
d.) The remaining 30% can be spent on wants and other variable (unplanned/unfixed) expenses.
4. Love and relationships: family, friends and significant others
Relationship resolutions often involve things like wanting to spend more time with the people you love. You want to make more friends. You want to get a boyfriend/girlfriend. You want to strengthen bonds. Humans are social beings and there are so many different things we want on different levels of the social scale. But somehow, along the way, we find excuses. We want to visit our grandparents but we’re too busy; work or school is hectic. We want to make more friends but where? There’s no place to. We want to find love but love doesn’t want to find us.
Tips: No more excuses. Actions are causes that create effects. So take action! If you want to spend more time with your family and friends or tell someone you love them—just do it. Work or school or your career isn’t something people will remember you by. At your funeral, people won’t remember that you hit your 2020 targets or increased company revenue or got an A in Physics class. People will remember your kindness and the memories you made with them—that you were there for them when they were sick or heartbroken.
Want more friends? Go out and meet people! Go to gigs if you like music—art events if you like art. Party. Dance. Exercise. Go out and do things you enjoy and you’ll somehow bump into like-minded people who enjoy those things too. And when you do, don’t forget to strike up a conversation!
That being said, make sure to spend more time with the people that matter. Life’s too short to be wasted on toxic and negative people. Focusing on people who you care about and who care about you in return is a good way to stay happy in 2020.
Lastly, the best way to find love in 2020 is to love yourself. Like Mama Ru says, “If you don’t love yourself, how the hey are you gonna love anyone else?”
5. Self-esteem and Improvement: confidence, identity and happiness
One of the biggest undertakings every year is self-esteem and improvement. If you have low self-esteem and self-worth, it’s high time you pick yourself up because no one else will pick up your broken pieces.
Tip: Do you want confidence? Then take chances! Taking chances increases your confidence because, even when things don’t go your way, the hardest part is getting over that fear of risk and rejection. Bigger than what you fear is fear itself. Besides, these chances you take are also opportunities that you would regret not taking. So be you un-apologetically and be seen for it.
If you feel unhappy no matter what you do, maybe you can start making serious changes in your life. It may be cliche to some people, but the whole idea of reinventing yourself might help you gain a whole new perspective. After all, if that doesn’t work for you, you can always change back. That’s the thing about life and self-will, you have the freedom to make whatever decision you want and be whoever you want to be.
Sometimes happiness is a mindset. Even those who seem to be doing great, who earn well and have everything under control, can still be unhappy. It just takes a little mind power and patience. Sometimes, the best we can do to not let our problems weigh us down is to find joy in the little things.
Good luck with all your resolutions in this new year of 2020!