No more NYE resolutions! I’m making anti-resolutions!

I’m ditching the ‘to do’ list and making a ‘to don’t’ list.

The holiday season is over. Five Christmas dinners have been eaten and you probably never want to see a roast or stuffing ever again. The mince pies are gone from the supermarket (but are now replaced with hot crossed buns so don’t panic) and your street has become littered with discarded Christmas trees, devoid of decorations and brown and brittle. It’s been fun but you feel like you have given in to the excess of the season. The new year is here which means it’s time you set some New Years resolutions...or do you?

The telly is telling you it’s time to change. Loose weight it says to you. Join a program, join a gym, new year, new you....blah blah blah.

You have heard it all before and just like previous years you think about becoming a different person.

Change?

Social media is telling you to change too. Those instagram influencers and pseudo gurus are telling you how to get summer fit. Eat clean and make sure you are happy while you slog it out and starve yourself.

So maybe you jot down a few things. You make some resolutions.
I resolve to...
Loose weight
Go to the gym
Eat clean
Run a marathon...

Last year I found myself doing this like I had done many times before. I listened to the tv, I listened to the advertising and to social media. I wanted to detox and change myself because I thought that must be what you do to make yourself a better person. But before I finished my New Years resolution list I started crossing things out. No, I said to myself, I won’t change.

This year I am taking it one step further. I am writing some anti-resolutions.

What is an anti-resolution?

Normal resolutions are a list of things that we want to do. Such as learn a language, Go to the gym. Eat healthy etc. they are hard to achieve because they are non specific and not things that we actually want to do(if we really wanted to do them we would have started it already, right?). And anyway, why should we change? Why do we always feel like we need to be better people.

NBC news reported recently that the top 3 resolutions for 2017 based on google searches was to ‘get healthy’, ‘get organised’ and ‘live life to the fullest’. But each of these things are vague and suggest that it is important for you to change to be a better person.

Instead of making a list of things ‘todo’ in the new year an anti-resolution is a list of ‘to don’ts’ ie something that we should stop doing. It is specific and instead of asking ourselves to change it is reenforcing our existing behaviours.

For example some ‘to donts’ could be; don’t apologise, don’t change, don’t give in to the pressures of others.


How to make an anti-resolutions list...

Think about the things that you do that are toxic (total buzzword), and detrimental for your own mental or physical health. Pick 3, or more if you want, write down those things then add don’t in front. Then don’t do those things. Simple right!


Bring on the anti-resolutions list...

Here is my list: to make it more memorable I also added it in meme form from my fav characters...

1. Dont second guess yourself-

As an artist, as a business woman and entrepreneur and as a person I am constantly second guessing myself. Not in a positive it’s-worth-seeing-both-sides-of-an-argument way but in a negative you-aren’t-good-enough way. So stop it! You are good enough, you are doing enough and achieving enough.

2. Dont apologise!

For being awkward, for being to loud, or too much or for taking up space. Dont apologise for all these things.

3. Don’t change for others- (ie Stay Weird)

Don’t change for that second cousin that said you got fat over Christmas, don’t change for the acquaintance that said ‘you look different’(and not meant it in a nice way) and don’t change for the friend of a friend who accuses you on being anti-social and introverted because you didn’t leap up and start a conversation with a random stranger(I’m all about introverted pride). Don’t change for any of those people. And don’t feel guilty about it either.

What do you think of a anti-resolutions list? Would you make one this year? What would you put on yours?

Ps. I wrote this blog post on my iPad whilst on holiday in Europe. If the formatting is crappy I’m not apologising. (See I’m already keeping my anti-resolutions)