After Dirty December and New Year’s celebrations, the first day of January, in fact, the rest of the month, can feel a bit dreary.
With your wallet slimming down and your waistline bursting out, it is also a tough time to get into the right mindset to start the new year as we mean to go on, but with a few tips and tricks, it’s easy to bear the January blues before they beat you.
Dress up
If you are still working from home, it is easy to slip into a slump working in your pyjamas. Instead, dress up like you mean business. Wear something, like a pair of earrings that will signal the switch from home time to work mode. Likewise, have a designated workstation even if it is a small corner of your living room so you’re not tempted to work on your couch, laptop precariously balanced on your lap.
Get organised
Whether you’re old school like me and prefer a desk calendar and a pen, or you’re techie and use the calendar on your mobile phone. Start putting key dates, such as birthdays and anniversaries. In a world where most things still look so uncertain, getting organised on life events you know you will celebrate no matter what can give you a sense of confidence and motivation.
Stay connected
After all the socialising of the festive season, with bank accounts too depleted to go out or meet up with friends, it could be easy to stay in your cocoon. While a little bit of downtime is always a good idea to take stock and take the New Year on, don’t forget to stay connected to friends and family. If the pandemic had taught us anything, we can still have fun with friends on a budget or online.
New Year evolutions
Forget New Year resolutions; think more New Year evolutions. Often New Year resolutions should be slow burners, not fast and furious changes, we all dream of achieving right away. If we haven’t got fitter by the end of January or quit a bad habit, we get disillusioned and completely lose the battle at the first hurdle.
Think of all the newbies at the gym who show up shiny and bright the first three weeks of the year, only to feel demotivated, when there are no instant wins.
Habits, work-life balance, relationships, much like the fitness of the body and the mind, take daily commitment, so this year scrap the resolutions and instead, resolve to continue evolving and growing into a new you.
