By Kristin Finney
Greene Publishing, Inc.
2011 is now nearly six months underway. This means that by now, more than half of those who made a new year’s resolution have all but forgotten their promises. Those who planned to diet may be back to eating their unhealthy foods. Those who planned to workout more are back to relaxing on the couch; when they could be doing crunches. The list goes on. However, why not begin again; the year is halfway over, so it can be called a mid-year resolution.
This means getting back to where you were mid-January, before life got in the way. Everyone has hectic schedules and busy workdays. The trick to maintaining your resolution is to not allow any excuses. It is far too simple to say, “I can’t today, but I will start back tomorrow. What can it hurt?” The truth is it can hurt a lot more than we believe and the way to avoid that mindset is to not allow it to happen.
Keeping oneself motivated is the most important part of any resolution. Whether you want to lose weight, eat healthier, spend more time with your family or keep a cleaner house, the most important step to accomplishing this is to making it happen the first time. Every time you do it after that will simply be building habit. If we do something enough, eventually it becomes part of our every day life.
Setting up a schedule is another great way to kick off your mid-year resolution. If you are eating healthier, then planning out each meal and doing a calorie count for each meal will help.
There are several websites that allow you to calculate a meals total fat count. If you’re planning to work out more, then set aside time each day to work out. For even better results, set aside two times that could work, that way if you miss one, you have a second option.
To make spending time with your family easier, set aside one night each week to be “family night.” On that night, play board games, card games or charades. It is important to make sure that everyone is entertained, so if you have several children, rotate weeks. One week let one child pick a game the next let another, until everyone has had a turn. Also, make sure that when you eat supper that night, that the entire family joins around the table.
Some other good ideas of resolutions would be to clean your life up. Don’t let simple things throw off your entire day. If something goes wrong, look at the ways that you can make it positive instead of focusing on the negative. Do not let arguments blow up into huge battles, simpley agree to disagree and let it go. Talk about things that bother you instead of holding it inside. This will help you to not get stressed out over small simple things, and in the long run makes you a happier person.
You could also begin a new tradition of sharing household chores. If the mom in the house normally does most of the chores, let the children take over a few nights, as well as dad. By trading off chores it allows mom more free time and no one person is stuck with all of the responsibility. This will take a lot of stress from your home and allow more to get accomplished in less time.
While it is hard to maintain a resolution for the entire year, perhaps breaking it up into six-month increments will help make it easier to accomplish your goals. During the summer there are a lot more free evenings and the days are even longer, which gives you more time to be awake and focused.
Don’t let yourself stray from your final goal, especially for health resolutions. It is never too late to work on making your life healthier.
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