New Year's Resolutions
Dr. Michelle's Column in the Fullerton Observer

A friend of mine has a great philosophy regarding New Year's resolutions. She always makes one that will be easy to keep, such as sleeping in on weekends or going to more baseball games. She also does some of the more typical ones like eat healthy, increase her exercising and so on. She always does the easy resolution so that she will guarantee herself some success on her New Year's resolutions.

I love this idea. Normally, we make a list of resolutions that we will never succeed at. Lose twenty pounds by Valentine's Day. Run a marathon in March; start training for it in February. Resolutions are tricky things. They can often set us up to fail. Or they can be a springboard to a significant change in our lives. What is wrong with not only setting up some realistic resolutions, and at the same time creating some resolutions that we actually want to do?

So, contemplate this: make a list of 5 resolutions. Three are ways to make your life healthy by, say, increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables that you eat each week, exercising 3 times a week for twenty minutes, putting a small amount into your savings each month or whatever you need to do to make you healthy. But two are for fun things. You will resolve to hang out with friends once a week. You promise yourself that you will not miss your favorite TV show. You will eat chocolate at least once per week.

We are successful when we create balance in our lives. We need to have goals to strive for as well as things that we enjoy in the here and now. So, make your list of resolutions, but be sure to put some fun stuff in there, too. And may we all have a healthy, happy New Year!