It’s one week into the New Year. Has your year started off the way you planned? Are you one week in and already over doing everything you planned to do this year? Worse, are you over doing the ONE thing you planned to do this year?

It’s SO easy to give up on a New Year’s Resolution. It’s so easy to give up on anything frankly.

For the past two years I have successfully kept my New Years Resolutions. However, it was only when I stopped making my resolutions to lose weight. Which was broad, too much pressure and completely unattainable because the plan to do this was always unrealistic, restrictive and a blind hope.

As silly as it sounds, this past year my New Years resolution was to do my anti-aging face regimen every day. I used to be someone who washed my face with a little St. Ives in the shower and then maybe dabbed on a little moisturizer and sporadically  an under eye cream that I bought on a whim but will sit under my sink until expiration.  I was always switching products, inconsistent and didn’t take it seriously.  Now post resolution, I’m addicted and I feel like I actually see a difference. It brought me a different joy than weight loss would have. It brought me a different sense of accomplishment than weight loss could have. It was also something I didn’t dread doing, the way I always dreaded dieting and counting calories.

This year my resolution was to keep our house more organized. We have a very small house. Anyone who has a small house knows that you simply bring in the mail and the place looks a mess. You don’t fold the throw blanket on the couch and you have a disaster. You leave the laundry unfolded for a couple days and you can’t see the bedroom floor. With a baby on the way, I know it’s only going to get harder to keep the house clean SO I decided to make my New Year’s Resolution to do a little tidying every day/night to keep the place more organized. Instead of letting it pile up to the point of no return.

Well Saturday morning, January 7th rolls around and as I’m staring at the pile of dishes in the sink and the mess of clothes piled up on my bedroom floor I am all of a sudden tempted to give up on my New Year’s Resolution because clearly it’s not something I am able to achieve nor is it something that I want to be doing on this Saturday morning. Instead of giving up, I changed my resolution. And by change, I mean I lessened my commitment. I walked downstairs, did the dishes, folded the blanket on the couch and organized everything that had accumulated on my kitchen table. I felt so accomplished after that I ended up leaving the house and heading for the gym and the grocery store too. My upstairs was still a mess, none of the clothes were folded and the bed didn’t get made but the small act of reducing my resolution to JUST the kitchen and living room, instead of the whole house was a game changer.

Looking back, I wish I had changed my New Year’s Resolution in years past. Changed it to something that was actually doable. I was I had taken my big goal of “losing weight” and broken it down into a smaller goal. For example, just drinking more water or just eating fruit in place of one snack everyday.  Its amazing how when things feel too overwhelming we stop doing them completely. Yet when we accomplish something small it encourages us to do more.

So today, if you’re someone who may have over committed to your new year’s resolution but still wants to make 2017 GREAT…change your resolution. It’s better to accomplish something small, then to not accomplish anything at all. (That sounds like something Dr. Seuss may have said:))

For added commitment, feel free to share your resolution when you share this post!! We want to hear 🙂