If You Want a Different Life, Make Different Choices

Start a new you now

I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions. It is so arbitrary. I did one year, and it had no long-term impact on my life. The expectations are too high; which leads to failure. And the reason why come January your gym is packed, and by the end of February, it is once again empty.

It happens every year.

Every single year in January, I cannot find a vacant treadmill or StairMaster at the gym. Come to the end of February, no problem. New Year’s resolution makers have the best intentions to make this significant life change overnight, and it doesn’t happen. They think somehow they will have different habits on January 1st than they had on December 31st.

What works

Setting little goals and making small tweaks to your daily life every day with intention is what impacts a lasting life change. Here are some examples that might seem small and obvious, but are highly effective when you implement them day in and day out.

Sleep

You want more sleep. Most adults know what time they have to get up in the morning. If you have kids, a job or a business to run, you pretty much know the night before when you have to rise to start your day.

Most of us — the studies on sleep bear this out again and again — need at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. Take the time you need to wake up in the morning and subtract 8 hours, and that is the time you need to be asleep by each night.

For example, I need a minimum of eight hours of sleep a night. I have to wake up a 6:00 am, therefore I need to make sure I’m in bed by 10:00 pm at the latest.

Life hack — to ensure I’m in bed by 10:00 pm, at 9:00 pm I wash up for bed. I wash my face, brush my teeth, floss, put my clothes away, possibly use a 10-minute face mask. By 9:30 pm, I’m in bed reading. By 10:00 pm, I’m out like a light.

The act of washing up at 9:00 is the signal to my body I’m winding down for bed. I don’t put off the act of washing up until I’m exhausted. I do it before I’m exhausted. This ensures a washed face and also cuts down on the likelihood I will procrastinate getting into bed.

Exercise

You want to lose weight, but you have not exercised in ten years. It is September right now. There is no better month to start an exercise routine than September. In most states the weather is gorgeous in September. Don’t wait until the New Year. Do it now.

OK, let’s be honest. When we don’t like doing certain things, as most people fight exercise, the best time to do the one thing we put off the most — the one thing we dread doing — should be done first thing in the morning upon waking.

This is where the advice you read again and again will be said once more. You need to get up an hour earlier if you don’t have time later in the day to exercise.

Life hack — Set your workout clothes out every single night before you go to sleep and not just your pants and shoes. Everything. Your pants or shorts, sports bra, socks, sneakers, water bottle, sun hat, anything you will need for that 2-mile run or walk. Start with walking every day, but walk fast. Break a sweat.

You will have a higher chance of doing an hour workout in the morning when you see the clothes you set out the night before sitting on the chair. Seeing them will remind you of the intention you had so firmly the night before when you put the clothes out in the first place — you want to lose weight and get healthy.

Exercise will be harder to skip if you have nothing to think about except getting dressed.

Work/life balance

You need more distinction between your home life and your writing life.

A lot of people these days work from home. Like anything in life, this has its advantages and disadvantages. It can be challenging to balance work life with family life because it is so easy just to answer one more email, look at one more Facebook notification, take one more business call, write one more blog post.

We all need time to decompress. At some point at the end of your workday, you need to say, OK, it is time to transition and spend time with the people I love and value.

If you have a home office or just a writing desk in a multipurpose room in your home, make a ritual.

Life hack — For a writer, the ritual could look something like this — Save all the necessary work. Close all the open screens on your computer, except one, the one you will start to write on the next morning — for your daily writing. Whether that is jounaling, Morning Pages, or the continuation of an essay or a book you are working on finishing. Put the caps back on the pens and highlighters strewn all over your desk and put them in their designated home. Return any books you were using as a reference to the bookshelf. Clean off anything else left on your desk. And finally, close the door to your office. You are done for the day. If you don’t have a home office, do everything else mentioned. Rituals give you a sense of completion and transition. You’ll be at it again tomorrow, but now you are going to just “be.”

Money

Saving for an emergency. This is an easy one, but hardly any of us do it.

Life hack — Set up an automatic deduction through your bank. Take 5–20% from your paycheck to automatically go into a savings account that you do not touch; you watch it grow.

Having an emergency fund will prevent you from putting an emergency on your credit card, and save you from paying huge interest fees later when something unexpected comes up, and it always will.

Making incremental changes will have a more significant impact on your life in the long run, and give you a better chance of sticking with life changes you desire to make your life more rewarding.

You can’t have a different life if you don’t make changes in the one you have.

When we make goals too large and are starting from scratch, we put too much pressure on ourselves and beat ourselves up for not following through on those goals. But you can be very effective in making small, incremental life changes that you barely notice when you are course-correcting that add up to big changes eventually.

Yes, it will soon be the beginning of a new year, but why not start now, when the expectations are low.

Why wait until January to make a life change when you can start making a life change right now, through tiny steps that turn into a daily habit come next year.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.