New Year's Resolutions

I always think about whether or not I want to do New Year's Resolutions each time the calendar creeps toward December 31. Some years I have made very concrete resolutions. Other years I've made more general ones like learning to accept myself and be me. I know of other people who've picked a word that they want to focus on in the next year, like "grace." I've also heard the idea of making an anti-resolution - stopping something you've been doing that's unnecessary. For example, "I resolve not to finish a book I'm not enjoying."

This year, I've decided to do things a little differently. I'm going to make 12 resolutions of daily habits - and focus on one per month. For example, floss, do yoga, write for 10 minutes, and so on. For the most part (other than the exercise ones), I'm trying to keep it to things that can be done in under 10 minutes. After all, most resolutions can make it for ONE month.

It takes 23 days to build a habit, so if it's something I want to continue to do daily that's an option. (The things I'd like to do that with are starred.) But I don't want to feel obligated to do that - after all, the compounded time of 12 things that take 10 minutes each is 2 hours a day! My main reasoning is, there are a lot of resolutions I could set, but if I try to tackle them all at once I'm setting myself up to fail.

Here's my list:

Jan - read devotional*

Feb - yoga* (*habit to form is some kind of exercise)

March - play keyboard

April - eat a fruit

May - run

June - play with dogs 10 minutes*

July - do a Spanish lesson 

August - floss*

September - blog*

October - play guitar 

November - write in my novel for 10 minutes

December - write appreciation letter