2019 Thoughts

Cheers to the New Year

Aww 2019! We are just starting our fourth week of the new year and everything still feels fresh and new. Our goals are set, we are putting our best foot forward, and going after what we want. When I was younger, I always set a handful of new year's resolutions. I would tick off the same things every year: lose weight, keep my room clean, spend less money, etc. Then, once I got into my late teens/early twenties, I realized that I never seemed to really tackle these things. Or even if I worked on them a little, I was dissatisfied with the results at the end of the year. So I decided to stop thinking up or verbalizing these resolutions to avoid end-of-the-year disappointment.

This year, however, I am taking a new approach. After reading a wonderful book, Refinement of Manner: Manners, Etiquette, and Elegance for the Twenty-First Century Woman, I realized that I had not been setting myself up to successfully tackle my resolutions.

Author Melanie Jarrell of Refinement of Manner, dedicates a worthy chuck of a chapter to setting and accomplishing goals. While I devoured almost every lesson from the book, always excited at the idea of trimming loose ends in my life to make things more tidy and polished, this lesson on goal list-making stuck with me. Jarrell suggests making a list of 100 goals to accomplish every year. Now before you stop reading, already overwhelmed at the thought of even coming up with 100 things to work on, hear me out.

I found that creating a thoughtful list of things to tackle this year was fun and relatively easy. Setting these 100 small goals that, theoretically, I can chip away at every day gives me little pangs of accomplishment throughout my day as I mentally tick them off my list.

Still not keen on the idea? Here's a sample from my list:

Read more books (at least one a month)

Practice my German more frequently

Complain less

Be kinder

Stregthen friendships that I wish to keep 

Spend 20-30 minutes,  two days a week catching up on current events

Be on time

Do at least seven acts of community service

Learn how to cook one fabulous dish

Stretch five days a week

Wear more sunscreen

Recycle more

Commit to taking my vitamins every day

Don't let the small things bother me

Give out more compliments

So far, the key to actually using your resolutions list to make positive changes in your life seems to be this:

1. Set small goals you can constantly work on:

It takes next to nothing to be a little kinder or give a stranger a compliment. Every morning, coffee date and dinner, is an opportunity to work on being on time. Anytime something goes wrong during my day, I can take thirty seconds to remind myself that this annoyance temporary and that this will not effect me in the long run if I do not allow it. Everyday I consciously work on improving these small things, and it has already helped me feel more positive overall.

2. Commit to writing down all 100:

Before this, I never really bought into the notion that writing your goals down somehow pushed you to stick to them. I knew I wanted to loose weight, I thought it every year, so is writing it down really going to help? YES! Something about having this physical list, a real, in-my-face reminder, helps me remember what I am working toward. And, obviously, it would be rather challenging to remember all 100. Also, having 100 small things to work on helps make me feel accomplished every day in one small way or another! With 100 things to choose from, how can you not manage to work on one thing every day until it becomes a habit?

3. Have an accountability buddy:

Create your list with a friend and then compare. I wrote mine out over dinner and coffee with one of my best friends and we had a ball laughing, lightly criticizing, and seeing how many goals we shared. Plus, we have random check-ins where we ask each other what things on ours lists we got to that day.

It's not too late to create your list and start improving your day-to-day life in whatever small ways you wish this year! I encourage you to think on it all day today, then sit down and write out the full list tonight. Have some great ideas? Share them in the comments below!

Vivre dans le luxe,
Jordin