Hey MBT fam, can you believe it’s 2020 already? I could have sworn it was only a couple of months ago when I was ringing in the 2019 new year with some of my best friends in a San Francisco nightclub. But here we are, exactly one year later. Where has the time gone?!

2019 was an exciting year. I lived in San Francisco for the first three months of 2019. While there, I learned how to ride the MUNI, the BART, and parallel park like a pro. I enjoyed frequent hikes to the Golden Gate Bridge and discovered countless new eateries almost on the daily. Shockingly, I even experienced coming home to a homeless guy drunkenly sleeping on my front porch. I called local law enforcement who said they’d send someone down to check it out but seeing as they get these calls regularly, this dispatcher seemed unphased.

After San Francisco, I traveled to the Philippines and Vietnam and made my biggest mistake while traveling to date. But still, I had a blast and would make that trip all over again in a heartbeat.

In May, Dustin and I moved to Los Angeles for a new travel nurse assignment. The weather was pleasant, the beaches beautiful, and we were happy to be located closer to a lot of our dearest friends.

While living in Los Angeles, we took a lot of shorter trips. From Wisconsin, Boston, Aruba, and Lake Tahoe. I’m sure I’m missing a few, but you get the picture.

For the last month of the year, we packed our bags and said goodbye to LA. We vacationed in Puerto Rico for a week before taking the three-day road trip to Wisconsin, our current location for the start of 2020.

In one year, I lived a life of so many adventures. And what’s funny? I didn’t set any New Year’s Resolutions. I just, did.

This year is different. This year, I’ve decided I’m going to make some new years resolutions of my own. 

Walking in 2020 like…

2020 is not only a new year, but it’s also the start of a new decade, and I want to start it off with a bang! I’ve juggled around a couple of resolutions in my head, and I’ve narrowed it down to these four:

1. Meal prep for at least five days out of the week.
2. Read at least 30 minutes a day.
3. Write at least 15 blog posts per month.
4. Travel to at least two new countries this year.

Now, every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions similar to the ones I just made (except for maybe the “blog posts” thing). According to an article on goskills.com, these are the top ten most common resolutions people make each year:

1. Exercise more
2. Lost weight
3. Get organized
4. Learn a new skill or hobby
5. Live life to the fullest
6. Save more money (or spend less money, depending on how you look at it)
7. Quit smoking
8. Spend more time with family and friends
9. Travel more
10. Read more

Yet, each year, people struggle to follow through with these plans. I mean, there’s a reason why gyms are obnoxiously crowded the month of January, and then a total ghost town when February rolls around. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 46% of individuals will successfully follow through with their New Year’s resolutions. That’s less than half!

Now, this is 2020. This is the start of a new era, a new decade. We don’t want to fail to achieve our goals and aspirations this year. It’s time for a new year’s attitude check, people.

If your mind is running with a thousand excuses to keep you from starting on your new year’s resolutions, here is a list of five ways to help break away from the self-doubt and excuses. Take some time for a new year’s attitude check and allow some room for personal growth and development. I know I’ll be using these to help me along with my New Year’s resolutions as well.

photo courtesy of Shutterstock

1. Change your mindset

A lot of us set our New Year’s resolutions at the end of the previous year. We fall into the #newyearnewyou hype. But when January 1st rolls around, our attitude immediately switches to “damn, now I have to eat healthier” or “crap, I’ve got to get up and start going to the gym now.”

One of the best things you can do to follow through with your goals is to change your mindset. Realize that changing ingrained habits is no easy feat, and instead of looking at it with a bitter attitude, think about how happy you’ll feel when you accomplish it.

Think about how good it’ll feel when you plan out your first trip abroad. Or how good it’ll feel when you’re waking up an hour earlier to get to the gym every morning. In summary, you have to change your mindset to be able to follow through with your goals.

See also: 

• Want to Travel the World? 7 Myths That Could Be Holding You Back

2. Embrace the suck

This brings me to my next point, embrace the suck. We don’t set new year’s resolutions because they’re comfortable or fun. We set them up to challenge ourselves to be better people.

When you take on a difficult goal, the accompanying discomfort of the necessary work you have to put in to achieve that goal can be stressful. A lot of the time, that stress is what causes us to quit.

When we’re changing our habits, stress is inevitable. There’s no way around that. What we can do is change our relationship to the stress. We can see the stress as a positive rather than a negative. In other words, embrace the suck. Recognize that the suck is good for us. That suck is what’s facilitating change.

3. Fall in love with the process, not the end result

A lot of the time, we fall in love with the idea of being healthy or the idea of taking an extended vacation. But when it comes to the process of getting there, like saving up for a big trip or getting to the gym every morning, we lose sight of our goals. 

Instead, begin to fall in love with the process. Begin to fall in love with working out every day. Begin to enjoy seeing your hard-earned money get stashed into a bank account titled “Vacation Fund.”

4. Don’t wait. 

You have to begin somewhere. And the longer you wait, the harder it’ll be for you to start. The best time for you to start is now. Jump in from wherever you are in life, and just go. If it’s something you truly want, you’ll find a way to make it work.

See also:

• 8 Simple Ways to Get Back Into Exercising After Vacation

5. Be optimistic – there’s no need to be hard on yourself

You should never beat yourself up for not being perfect. We will fall off the trail, and that’s okay. The important thing is to get back on and continue moving toward your goal. 

If you’re always putting yourself down, having a negative attitude, or looking at every mistake as a failure, then it’ll be easy to give up on your resolutions altogether.

I hope in reading this, you’ve been inspired to challenge yourself this year. To make your 2020 New Year’s resolutions, and see them out. If you do so, I can almost guarantee that 2020 your best year yet!

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