I've always followed the tradition of pledging to do something different with my life every New Years, even if it's a small change. I've never been able to keep New Years resolutions past a couple weeks, so I've spent the past few years trying to figure out ways around that.
My challenge to myself this year was to read every single day before I went to bed. I've got way too many books on my "to-read" list to not do this. But I've also been wanting to get to a point where I'm okay with waking up early, to avoid the all-too-common scenario of rushing through my morning routine and arriving late to wherever I'm scheduled to be, simply because I just had to have that extra 5 (read: 25) minutes of sleep.
A buddy of mine said:
"I have no problem waking up early; it's the getting-out-of-bed part that kills me."
This affected me in a profound way. He was right - I can wake up easy peasy. But it's resisting the temptation to go back to sleep that gets me every time. So my train of thought went something like this:
"I should resolve to get out of bed as soon as I wake up every morning. I'll set my alarm for the last possible second I could wake up, but if I wake up at 5:30, I get up at 5:30."
"But I already have a resolution: read every night before I go to bed."
"What if I did both? No, because then every time I heard something cool, I'd add it to the list, and before I knew it, I'd have 12 resolutions to keep up with."...And then it hit me. It's much easier to keep something going for 30 days than it is for 365 days. So I decided to have a new resolution each month this year. The idea is that if I can read every day for all of January, then by February it will have become part of my routine (and it has).
So when February rolls around (and it has), I will already be in the habit of fulfilling my January resolution, so I can start to focus solely on my February resolution (and I have).
But the trick, as I've said before, is not to plan everything out beforehand. This is where I would normally continue by saying "...and here is a list of all of my resolutions for the year of 2012."
...But I didn't make a list. I don't plan to. In January, I knew what my February resolution would be. Now, I know what my March and April resolutions are: to learn how to utilize my "inner nag" to get things done, and to act on it when I say "I need to ______." (e.g. sending that email NOW instead of LATER, or setting a solid date to hang out instead of saying "we need to hang out soon")
I'm not sure which will come first, but by May 1, I will have done each of them for at least a month.
The reason I'm not planning this out is because I am constantly changing and my world is always evolving. Come August, I may not be where I thought I would be. I may have different needs in the monthly resolutions department.
So there you have it. Instead of a new resolution every 365 days, I'm living by a code of new resolutions every 30 (or 31...or 28...or 29) days. And this month's resolution is going to annoy the hell out of me. In a good way.
This is all for now,
-R.
