The phrase “broken promises” must have originated with New Year’s resolutions.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever pledged to make a resolution and never followed through or didn’t attempt it in the first place.
Wow, I was expecting a lot of hands but not that many!
Count me among the resolution-breakers. There’s no shame in not fulfilling them because life tends to take up a lot of physical and mental real estate for us humans. That said, resolutions that are practical and suited to you are more attainable because you’ll actually want to pursue them.
With that in mind, I’m going to share some of mine that may even align with yours.
Five Minutes of Daily Meditation
I see your eye-roll, now stop it!
Meditation this, meditation that. Everyone talks about it and mindfulness, and it can be downright annoying. But the positive, healthy effects of meditation are not B.S. Take this article from Mayo Clinic called Meditation: A Simple, Fast Way To Reduce Stress. First of all, great headline, and second, the benefits are numerous and supported by medical science:
- Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations
- Building skills to manage your stress
- Increasing self-awareness
- Focusing on the present
- Reducing negative emotions
- Increasing imagination and creativity
- Increasing patience and tolerance
Similar to how lifting weights strengthens your biceps, meditation exercises the brain, possibly resulting in healthier neurological activity “from changes in grey matter volume to reduced activity in the ‘me’ centers of the brain to enhanced connectivity between brain regions,” per Forbes.
Weekly Yoga
Yoga is meditation’s kissing cousin and comes with its own set of health benefits.
According to hopkinsmedicine.com (as in Johns Hopkins, which knows a thing or two about health), “… if you’re going through an illness, recovering from surgery or living with a chronic condition, yoga can become an integral part of your treatment and potentially hasten healing.”
Specifically, yoga is shown to:
- Improve strength, balance, and flexibility
- Help with back pain-relief
- Alleviate arthritis symptoms
- Promote heart health
- Help you get better sleep
- Increase energy
- Manage stress
We could all use some of that.
Read More Non-Fiction Books
I like to think that I’m a relatively humble person, but I do like to crow about the amount of reading I do.
I mentioned in an earlier blog post that as of early November I’d read over 70 books. Now I’m up to 85. However, the majority have been fiction, which there’s nothing wrong with, but I want to sprinkle in more non-fiction. My list includes:
- The Burning House
- Race Matters
- The Color of Law
- Mindfulness
- The 4% Fix
- The Magic of Thinking Big
- I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough”
- The New One Minute Manager
- Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life
- Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team
- The Princess Spy
- No Ordinary Time
- Lincoln’s Last Trial
- Founding Mothers
If you have any recommendations, please put them in the comments section.
Reduce Social Media Time
Now raise your hand if you’ve gone down the social media rabbit hole more times than you’d like to admit.
What has two thumbs, makes gift baskets, and is guilty of Facebook rants and doom-scrolling? Me!
There are certainly benefits to social media–connection, creative ways to market your business, helpful information–but it also triggers negative emotions like anger, envy, frustration, etc. Citing various studies, Medical News Today reports that social media use is linked to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
I don’t need that, so in 2022, I am going to be more judicious with my social media time.
You know, this is a pretty doable list, and damn it, I’m going to make it happen. With the few days left before 2022, I hope this inspires you to create one of your own. Happy New Year!
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