Most New Year’s festivities, celebrations, traditions, and resolutions have a common theme: hope for a healthy, happy life. Seeing better days ahead, achieving financial success, obtaining favor, expecting good fortune, and planning new beginnings are deeply rooted in New Year’s traditions.
Many people choose New Year’s Day to reflect on the past year, plan for the upcoming year, and set new resolutions. According to Wikipedia, “A New Year’s resolution is a tradition, most common in the Western World but also found in the Eastern World, in which a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their behaviour at the beginning of a calendar year.”
While resolving, changing, accomplishing, and improving are all noble plans, implementation and execution often fall short. In the articles cited below, only 12%-46% of resolutions were achieved. However, being specific, realistic, and intentional when making New Year’s resolutions will help you to remain persistent and attain success.
Set Yourself Up To Succeed
The New Year’s Resolution Project, a study on achieving a range of resolutions by Richard Wiseman, offers practical advice on how to succeed. First, don’t “make the mistake of trying to achieve too much”. Next, plan ahead and avoid previous resolutions. And overall, be specific and make it personal.
Determining what you really want and how to make it a reality are key points to accomplishing your intentions. Understanding what truly motivates you, and the reason for the resolution, will also help you define and organize the steps needed to realize your objective.
Being specific about your priorities and honest with yourself about how much attention you will devote to your resolution or plan will significantly increase the likelihood of success. The Top 10 Most Common New Year’s Resolutions (and How to Follow Through on Them) starts with a list of rather vague resolutions. The bulk of the article is dedicated to “an exhaustive plan for following through on your resolution.” While this is an excellent “in-depth” read, keeping things simple may work better.
Decide, Define, Remind, Persist
Setting goals, and then mapping out a plan of mini-goals to help you reach your ultimate objective is one way to effective. If you’ve set goals before, you’ve probably heard of or followed the S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related) approach.
But, A Brief History of SMART Goals enlightens us that the original writer of this “standard” also said “It should also be understood that the suggested acronym doesn’t mean that every objective written will have all five criteria.” Just deciding on a specific objective and defining the steps needed to complete it puts you way ahead of anyone making a "common, vague" resolution.
Simply reminding yourself is another way that helps you accomplish, change, or improve. Create a visual reminder and put it somewhere that you will see every day. Whether you find a picture that inspires you and helps you visualize the benefit, or you just write your resolution, plan, or goal on a sticky-note, taking a few moments each day to focus on your purpose can help you stay motivated to follow-through consistently.
Enlisting the help of friends, or even just telling them about your resolution, can also increase the probability that you will remain determined.
“Continue, Change, Accomplish, and Improve” All Involve Multiple Steps!
Recognize that getting from “here” to “there” is a process. Congratulate yourself for any progress, and celebrate along the way. Acknowledge and accept that you may have some “mis-steps”, but don’t beat yourself up for not always taking the direct route! If you get “off-track”, just stop and re-focus on the ultimate objective. Then make your next step in the direction you set out to go.
Hope for a Healthy, Happy Life…
We hope that you are encouraged to achieve, attain, realize, accomplish, reach, complete, do, succeed, triumph, and/or get the desired results of your New Year’s Resolution(s).
One of the main objectives at Caravel Cleaning Company is giving you more time to spend with the ones you love.
Looking at the list of the “Top 10 Most Common Resolutions”, we can actually help you accomplish 7 of them if you live in Ventura County California!
Using our deep clean and recurring house cleaning services can give you more time to exercise, get organized, learn a new skill, live life to the fullest, travel, and/or read too!
Did you know that keeping your house clean has physical and mental health benefits?
“Just removing clutter and keeping your environment clean can help improve your self-esteem by creating a more positive self-image and sense of self-worth.” Find out how a few simple adjustments in your daily routine can help you accomplish the goal of keeping your house clean in our post House Cleaning Pro Tip: A Little Cleaning Here and There Adds UP to A Lot of Happy! You can even download a free, printable, Daily Cleaning Schedule Checklist.
Happy New Year!
If keeping your home neat and tidy is one of your resolutions this year, you’ll want to take 2 minutes to read House Cleaning Pro Tip: A Place for Everything…, which includes 10 Tips to Keep Your House Clean and Organized.
Housekeeping the EASY Way…
Just call 805-804-5454 or request an estimate from the Cleaning Crew at Caravel Cleaning Company in Oxnard, CA.
We can't wait to Help You Keep Your Home Shipshape!
Caravel Cleaning Company provides commercial and residential cleaning services in Ventura, Camarillo, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Ojai, Santa Paula, Somis, Newbury Park, and Thousand Oaks.