I’ve been thinking lately about habits: how we make them, how we change them, and how to instill good ones in our children. This reminded me of resolutions, since really making a New Year’s Resolution (or New School Year Resolution or what have you) is a declaration that you’re going to change a habit.
So I’m interested in your thoughts on resolutions or changing habits in general. I think hearing about how other people approach the whole habits and resolutions thing would help me clarify my own thoughts. Feel free to answer one or more or all of the questions in the comments if you’re so inclined!
- What is the most unusual resolution you ever made or heard of someone making?
- When you make a resolution or decide to change a habit, do you generally try to stop a bad habit, start a good habit, or replace a bad habit with a good habit?
- Does identifying one area of your life for a resolution make you more or less aware of other areas you need to improve?
- If you stopped making resolutions at some point, how old were you and why did you stop?
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I’ve tried to stop bad habits and start good ones, but I’ve never really tried to substitute a good one for a bad. That might have been more successful, as I am (usually) better about adding good habits than I am ridding myself of bad ones.
I think identifying one area definitely makes me more aware of other areas. Fortunately, success in one area also seems to lead to success in other areas. Of course, the reverse is also true.
I’ve never stopped making them, although I’ve never really been that big on making them just for the new year or new school year. I try to work on things throughout the year, otherwise I know I’d start off with a bang in January, then fizzle out before Spring and do nothing again until the next year.
And yet there are still those resolutions that I keep repeating because if I do manage to get into a routine with good habits, the least little hiccup in my life and they’re gone again.
Unrelated to this post, but didn’t your new posts used to show up on Facebook? I got in the habit of just clicking through…but today I realized I hadn’t seen anything from you on FB for a while, so I came over here, and lo and behold, several new posts I hadn’t seen yet! Just wondering….
Hey Melissa,
Yes, I usually put the posts on my FB page, but since I’ve been travelling these past few weeks it’s been difficult to get on a computer long enough to keep that up so I’ve let it slide. I should have gotten one of those auto-uploaders set up before I left! I hope to have things back to normal by mid-August when we’re back home. I’m glad you checked in!
Okay, that makes sense! By the way, thanks for the Alan Bradley book recommendations. I read them both and thought they were great. I passed the first on to my husband, and he read it in one sitting (staying up until the wee hours of the morning) and told me not to give him the other one for a while because he didn’t think he could read it responsibly!