Making New Year's Resolutions That Last!

Well, the new year snuck up on me just like every year, how about you? It seems every year I make the same new years resolutions.  This year I've decided to take a different approach that I have been working on with other goals (personal and professional). 

This year, I'm coming up wi th a new plan. It's a three layer system appraoch. First, I'm writing down my dreams for the next 5 years.  Am I heading in the direction that will help me reach these dreams. If not, I'm breaking it down into small parts. The second layer is to decide what big goals need to be met to ge closer to my dreams.  This puts it into something tangible that I can cross off a list.  This would usually include items I usually put on my new years resolutions. 

But that won't be good enough this year.  The third layer is to break these goals into small baby steps.  With small baby steps, I can cross things off sooner and the new changes won't be such a big leap that ends up failing after a week or month.  Let's come up with example to illustrate my point.

My dream is to live a more sustainable lifestyle. I'm already heading in that direction and to some people, I'm well on my way. Let's pretend this is a new concept that I want to integrate into my family life. I nstead of going the extreme direction and radically change my life (and my family's too), I'm going to make a list of things I'd like to work on this year. 

List:
Eat local and mostly organic foods
Grow an organic garden
Switch to cloth diapers
Reduce my water consumption 30%
Reduce amount of plastic in my home 50%

Ok this is already a fairly large list for a newbie, but I wanted to give a variety of examples on the list. Next, I need to break this into bite size steps and work my way to these bigger goals.

So for organic foods, maybe I'd start by learning which fruits and vegetables are most important to eat organic. Then as the food already in my home gets eaten, I then add organic foods into the pantry. In the meantime, I'm going to start reading labels on the foods in my grocery store. What's in them and where did they come from? I'll build on this until I reach my goal and make it a slow process. 

Maybe with cloth diapers, I can start by attending one of our workshops or calling us up and using us to learn all I need to know. Then I would ask any friends or even strangers how it has been working for them and their preferences of diapers. Once I'm ready to take the leap, I might start with diapers and then work my way to cloth wipes.

So what are some of the changes you are thinking about making? Are you moving in the direction of your dreams? If not, how are you planning to get back on track?

Happy New Year,

Jen

Jen Starks, Owner www.ecologicalbabies.com ecologicalbabies@gmail.com 574.275.1235