The one phrase resolution
I know I haven’t been keeping this blog updated recently. It’s not that I’m out of ideas. My head is usually full of half-baked ideas that if you tip it over, many of them will spill onto the floor and make my room look like a child’s nursery with toys all around. I don’t usually know where to start, but I’ve got to start somewhere. So here it goes; the one word (or one phrase) resolution. You know how productive people tend to make resolutions at the beginning of every year. Well lazy people like myself tend to enjoy a new spin to this whole resolution business. We make a one-phrase resolution. As mentioned earlier, a resolution is like a promise you make to yourself. In the footsteps of those who made the 2 in 1 hair shampoos, many people mix their goals and resolutions in fancy phrasing and add them to a list – that eventually gets lost somewhere. To emphasize, goals are targets that you are supposed to reach. While resolutions are decisions you resolve to make. So losing 5 kg would be a goal, while exercising frequently would be a resolution.
But the one-phrase resolution is a brilliant idea. It’s just a motto that you decide to live by for that entire year. Or month. My friend’s motto last year was ‘healthy lifestyle’. Sticking to it made her eat more proteins, and less carbs. It made her exercise more and eventually lose weight. What it did not do is put walls and confine her. And since it was made of two words only, and was as generic as it could be, it was easy to remember, and more importantly, to live by.
In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin had a motto for each month, and while she did have a list of resolutions to achieve under each motto, lazy people like myself could just skip that part. So for instance, some of Gretchen Rubin’s motto were:
-January: Boost Energy
-February: Remember Love
-May: Be Serious About Play
Possible one-phrase resolutions to live by could be: “Take more risks”, “Do it scared”, “Journal More” and “Build Self-Esteem”. And while it is true that self-help experts would emphasize on setting up more SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based) goals, but if that has never worked with you, you could give the one-phrase resolution a try and start from there. The ultimate goal is to look back a few months from now and realize you’ve grown and become better (smarter, braver, healthier, kinder)….
That’s all folks!
A Heart's Echoes 