2014 new years resolution-ing

Happy New Year! 

It's officially 2014 and I've decided to jump back on the resolution bandwagon. 

I'm not one for generic "this is my year" Facebook posts, but I do love a good I-swear-I'll-do-it-this-year-you-just-watch-me blog announcement, and here it is. 

I'm a sucker for New Years resolutions. In fact, I officially became a resolution-stereotype when I joined our local gym on New Years Eve. I have also managed to drag my arse there for the last three days. Record. 

If you've been reading lak for a while, you might remember some friends and I had a ritual on New Years Day to get together and make a list of 26 resolutions (one for each letter of the alphabet), and laugh at our failed attempts from the year before. In 2011, we got lazy, but I still managed to post my own resolutions here. See how I went in this post. 

The last two years have been resolution-empty. Life has been in the way. This year, despite sickness, laziness and one of us in Canberra, three of us managed to 'meet' via Skype and reignite our old ritual. This year we decided to be a little kinder to ourselves and skip the one-for-each-letter-of-the-alphabet part.   

Maybe we fell a little in love with the whole video conference call thing… 

Yep. We are that cool. 

Last year, I made some big life changes, including re-entering the world of study and taking on a new part-time job, which seriously decreased our income. I finished a Certificate 4 in Design and this year am moving on to an Advanced Diploma in Graphic Design. Have I told you yet that I'm psyched? So now that the big rocks are sorted, this year is about managing the pebbles and sand, focusing on the little things that will help me to be healthy and happy long term. 

I decided to set myself goals that are super easy to measure. Each of my 2014 resolutions is about creating a new habit:

• 220 days at the gym
• 300 nights of good sleep hygiene
• 180 days of protein for breakfast 
• 100 consecutive days of meditation
• 200 days of writing 500 words
• 20 activities that make me feel right (Thanks to Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project)
• Monthly video posts for the blog
• Monthly visual posts for the blog
• My own 'a month without' experiment, starting with No-Wine-January (Thanks to Leo over at Zen Habits)

If you're wondering why I set goals that started with "200 days; 300 nights" etc, it's because I am far more likely to forgive myself for having an 'off' week if the goal is a general number instead of a weekly commitment. I figure that on a good week, I can rock it out at the gym 5 or 6 times, but in a bad week, I'm not going to beat myself up if I can't even drag my sorry arse there once. 

I'm also being gentle on myself with what is required of me on those goals- whether I'm at the gym for 30 minutes or two hours (unlikely), I'd still only get one box 'crossed off', so there's no pressure on me to push myself too hard. 

While I've listed some big numbers for the year, it all feels challenging but do-able [insert my best teacher voice] if I will just apply myself. 

What are your resolutions for 2014?