New Year’s Habits Rather than New Year’s Resolutions
For me, 2025 is a year of growth in art, business, and health.
New Year’s isn’t just about making radical resolutions.
You know the usual resolutions… when we plan to diet, go to the gym, run a marathon, and then in the third week we lose momentum and all plans fall to the wayside. I started some new health habits at the end of 2024 before our family vacation. I began swimming laps at a nearby pool.
Change is about creating tiny baby steps, shedding past mind -set and ideas of who we were or who we were supposed to be.
Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.”
If you want to run a business you can’t think of yourself as someone bad with numbers or disorganized.
If you want to paint you can’t think of yourself as uncreative or too busy.
If you want to get in shape you can’t think of yourself as an uncoordinated clutz who was the last chosen at gym class.
Skills are built from the ground up. While actions change, the mindset needs to change with it.
Building my painting habits has shown me the power of slow and steady transformation and given me confedance to make more changes. Goals are great but the result is never what you initially imagine. There’s a lot of putting one foot in front of the other daily. I think of this as I swim laps in a local municipal pool. It’s a habit that I’m just beginning. It’s fragile, precarious. I could make excuses at any turn. It takes 15 minutes to walk there. It’s crowded with people-sometimes 3 to a swim lane, it’s loud. The locker room feels soggy wet and is filled with talkative old women.
Poco a Poco, little by little we tend our plants and our habits.
6 ways to build a habit
Choose something you like and that challenges you but doesn’t overwhelm you. (Since injuring a foot, swimming is a logical choice for exercise and I love swimming and have done it in the past)
Pay ahead of time. Money helps motivation to follow-through. (I buy a block of swim passes by the month.) You may pay for a class to show up for the group and finances.
Pack your tools or materials ahead of time so you’re ready to go (I prepack my gym back the night before and let the packing be part of the process)
Have a friend to do it with or check in about the process. Having a friend helps with accountability. (I have coffee once a week and check in about fitness progress with a friend)
Stay in the moment and enjoy it. ( I don’t like the noise, the crowded locker room and the walk to the sports facility but I do love the heated water in winter so I focus on that and I walking across to a park thinking of my walk as part of the workout-warming up and cooling down among the trees.)
Set mini goals. Why are you doing this? Really, why? And What do you want to accomplish? (I want to build my cardiovascular endurance, build strength in my ankles, and lose weight in a year- healthily)
CHECK OUT MY ORIGINAL PAINTINGS IN MY PORTFOLIO. I”VE ADDED A BUNCH.
I’ve used swimming as my new habit but it’s the same with my painting. I’ve built the practice and continue to adjust and build it over time. How I paint now and practice now is not the same as in 2020 and won’t be the same later in 2025. It’s a process that’s built- not from New Year wishes but from building habits bit by bit “poco a poco”. I’d love to hear your new habits and process of change!