New Year Resolutions- What Will You Do?

People can hate on New Year resolutions, but I love them.

Goal setting is my jam.

As a person who loves to plan, I literally get excited about dreaming big and then figuring out a pathway to get to my goal.

I believe in the beauty of the journey. If you only enjoy the moment you achieved your goal, you’ve spent a lot of unhappy hours working towards that point, and only seconds savoring the success!

If you took New Year’s weekend and thought about what you want the next 365 days to look like, good for you!

So… what’s next?

How about sharing those New Year Resolutions?

I get it, putting them out into the universal can be little scary.

It’s one thing to open the Notes app on your iPhone and write them out, it’s another thing to say it to someone who might remember if you “fall short”.

And if this idea makes your stomach flip-flop, I’m not suggesting you broadcast your New Year resolutions all over social media (but if you want to- do it!!) or spill the beans in your weekly staff meeting.

But I would highly recommend sharing them with at least one other person.

Maybe it’s your mom, partner, or your best friend (and I’m not talking about the dog).

Saying it out loud to another person gives your goals roots. And it also gives you that little push you need to keep at it.

So I’m going to walk the walk and share my New Year resolutions for 2017. They are:

Blog every weekday
Write (and submit!!) at least six short articles to media outlets
Run two marathons. At least one in under 4 hours.

With these goals in mind, I’ve laid out a few ways I’m going to make them happen.

For my first goal, it’s really just sticking to what I promised myself I’d do when I started this blog.

I post every weekday, with the expectation of holidays (this girls needs little break, too!). It’s been a challenging commitment over the past 6+ months, but totally worth it.

So just sticking to it for 2017, and of course doing my best to always improve, is a resolution I really care about.

I’d love to really step up my photography game for the blog in 2017. For me, this means using my Canon camera a lot more. And of course, this also means kicking up my Instagram pics a notch too!

Second, New Year resolution is I need to stop thinking about what I could write for larger blogs and publications and just start doing it AND submitting them.

I’ve read the submission guidelines for many of favorite blogs and publications too many times to count.

Now it’s time to think through my half-baked ideas, and put them out there. As a planner, I don’t want to wait until the end of the year to get going, so my short term goal is to submit one piece every other month.

I promise to give an update by the end of February and call myself out if it doesn’t happen!

And final New Year resolution, the Marathons!

Step One for this Goal- Identify Marathons and Register.

I took care of this back if good old 2016. If you want to read a little more detail about it, check out this post from last month.

Step Two- Start a Formal Training.

Lucky for me, that starts tomorrow! I’ve been running pretty religiously since November, but I recently signed up for a training program through my local running store, Fleet Feet.

The first session of the 16-week program is tomorrow. Come rain or shine, I’ll be out there ready to go!

Who knows what 2017 has in store?

So many people shy away from goals or resolutions because they say things like it’s overdone, or no one sticks to them, etc.

But in my opinion, that is just fear speaking. Why not put it out there? No one knows where the year will take any of us. Why not at least set your sails in the direction you hope to go??