The resolutions many of us make at the start of a new year are doomed to failure. When I was very young and knew little about how to make things happen, I used to write down a few grand statements\u2014usually in the same words\u2014every January, only to be disappointed when those high hopes fizzled. Good intentions, no follow-through.<\/p>\n
Feel free to choose your own time to begin this project. Spring has some advantages (and the spring is when you decide it is, regardless of what the calendar tells you). Below, you\u2019ll find a few ideas that I\u2019ve gathered from psychological research and hard-won personal experience, plus tips on that all-important follow-through, the thing that gets you from \u201cI wish\u201d to \u201cI did it!\u201d<\/p>\n
5 Tips Toward Refreshing Yourself<\/p>\n
1. Find a fresh route to your personal flow zone. <\/p>\n
First, get familiar with how you already enter the timeless state of flow, when you\u2019re so focused on some activity that you forget yourself. According to the original flow research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, those who spend more time in flow activities are more motivated, more resilient<\/a>, and happier.<\/p>\n I discovered that I get into flow during conversations with friends. I figured out why: I don\u2019t feel judged among friends, and I feel competent enough at hours-long friendly banter. When you figure out what gets you into flow, and why, take this self-knowledge into another realm to feel stimulated and refreshed.<\/p>\n 2. Face what you\u2019re avoiding.<\/p>\n Doing something that you\u2019ve been putting off removes a huge weight from your mind and frees up amazing energy. One way to urge yourself to plunge into a dreaded chore is to \u201ctrivialize the task.\u201d Put your perfectionism<\/a> aside for long enough to let yourself perceive that single activity as just another minor item that you will be able to cross off your list.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re smart about making such lists, you will have written: \u201cBegin chore of \u2026 whatever.\u201d And once you\u2019ve begun, you\u2019ll feel energized.<\/p>\n 3. Give yourself credit.<\/p>\n One way of focusing on the positive, even if you\u2019re a die-hard non-optimist<\/a>, is to list your old resolutions and reflect on those you at least partially achieved. Make note of the long, slow pattern of gradual change in your life, or let yourself feel okay about resolutions that you no longer care about as you\u2019ve matured. We tend to recall our failures, but you can also learn to build up your resiliency and upbeatness by purposefully seeking out the successes.<\/p>\n 4. Reconnect with an old friend.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s someone you went to high school with a long time ago, or a more recent friend whose connection you\u2019ve allowed to fade without meaning to, you can gain a sense of renewal by reaching out. I\u2019ve done this with several old friends I\u2019ve found on Facebook<\/a>. We don\u2019t necessarily have that much in common anymore, though when we do connect, I get to recapture a lot of pleasant feelings, especially the gratifying feeling of re-living that fondly remembered time.<\/p>\n 5. Invent a new ritual.<\/p>\n Someone once told me she celebrated extra anniversaries in advance, so she and her husband could have more of those joyful memories than a normal lifespan would allow them. Celebrate half-birthdays or any other happy occasions\u2014including ones you totally make up\u2014personalized to whomever you\u2019re with, or even alone. After all, we do get into ruts in our lives, and the whole idea of spring cleaning is to clear out the cobwebs and see the world anew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The resolutions many of us make at the start of a new year are doomed to failure. When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-420985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}