How to Make and Keep Resolutions and Ours for 2017!

Happy New Year! It’s the classic and traditional time to make big goals and resolutions for yourself for the coming twelve months. We share our resolutions every year (2014, 2015, 2016) but we have never really shared how we make them.

To set my goals, I like to think what makes me happiest? I try to think of ways that my life could be happier and better in line with these things that make me happiest. For example, I really am happiest when I exercise regularly. It’s hard to get into, but makes my life so much better when I do it. So, with that in mind, I will make a resolution around exercise.

The whole point of making resolutions is to make promises to yourself – and you really want to keep them! In my experience, the best goals are specific and measurable. For example, “read more books” is not as good of a goal as “read one new book a month.” Having specific measurable goals pushes you to achieve them and leaves less wiggle room for letting yourself out of them!

My last suggestion is that you tell people your resolutions! Saying them out loud and sharing them with others gives you accountability. I know that I am embarrassed to admit if I am not following through on something, especially if my only excuse is laziness. Just like a gym buddy, get yourself a resolutions buddy and push each other to achieve your goals!

Morgan:

Read read read – I read a lot in 2016 and my goal for 2017 is 110 books, which is over 2 a week. I love reading & audio books so this will be a fun one for me!

Re-do the kitchen – Oh hey a house goal! I absolutely love the first floor of our house and the changes that we have made to it in less than six months. But, the new open concept makes the 90’s kitchen super visible from everywhere. I hope that we can do a kitchen reno on a budget in the first half of 2017 and can’t wait to share it with you.

Give the blog a push – We have been writing here for four years now. I love the blog as a personal diary, a record of all we have done, and a way for others to keep up with us from near and far. However, we spend a lot of time blogging. Between doing projects (some that we may not have done without the blog), to photographing, editing, and writing, we are in for a lot of time. In 2017, I’d like to do a push to make it profitable to make all that time a bit more “worth it.” More info on this… as soon as I figure it out!

Sean:

Not let things get to me – so this one isn’t exactly in the “measurable” category, but it is in the “make me happiest” category. Sometimes I can really let little things get to me and I need to be easier on myself. If I don’t finish phase 3 of a project by the day I meant to, oh well. No need to stress when there’s plenty of time.

Do more personal writing – I write for a living at work and I write a lot of our blog content here, but I have a personal writing project I’ve been working on for a while, but always push to the back burner. My goal is to work on this writing project of mine for at least one hour a week.

Fix my posture – I really want to make a conscious effort to make my posture better. I slouch at work and I slouch on the couch. I’m 6’2″ tall and I feel like I don’t always stand that tall. I planning to write myself a sticky note to put on my computer to remind myself. A guy at my office has that and every time I see it, I imagine it working.

What are your resolutions?