By Erin Massey, LCSW
With 2023 just around the corner, many, myself included, are considering what our New Year’s Resolutions may consist of. Most everyone’s resolutions consist of changes that we would like to see for ourselves over the next year. Your New Year’s Resolutions may consist of anything from wanting to lose weight, increase exercise, drink more water, and even attempts to quit smoking. We usually start out strong at the beginning of the year with our changes, but often things begin to fall off a month or two into the New Year. But what about taking a different approach to your “New Year’s Resolution” this year, and instead setting a “theme” for the year versus a resolution? For example, you could set a theme such as “health” for the year, which is full of short term goals versus one giant goal for the whole year.

Your health theme could consist of smaller goals that are easier to achieve such as joining a gym, or cutting out one soda a day and replacing it with water, or even working on doing small things to improve your mental health, all in an effort to engage in overall better health over the next year. It’s a lot more encouraging when you are able to achieve smaller goals, and this can help get you motivated to achieve longer term goals that you may have for the year. Here’s to a New Year and a Healthier you!