We’ve just welcomed a New Islamic Year and like previous years, it might be hard to keep to your resolutions! Forget those unrealistic expectations and goals that were not achieved, or those promises to be the best version of yourself, but falling short of it every year.
Let’s all try and set some goals that we can actually achieve:
1. Sleep Better
For most youths or workaholics, this might be a difficult resolution to stick with. But surely it should be easy because everyone loves to sleep!
As much as we all aim to get enough hours of sleep each night, many of us are guilty of staying up too late every day and feeling the impact of the lack of sleep the next day. What’s worse, lack of sleep might affect your concentration and focus for the day, upsetting your body clock and energy.
Set a simple aim – just have one earlier night. Set that one goal, just for one night for a start, and keep it consistent. If you feel better in the morning, then you might just want to repeat the process. Within a few weeks, you might just nurture a good sleeping habit!
2. Get Active
Most people have probably made some sort of fitness resolutions but every year, for most of us, it’s nothing more than just a yearly resolution. We all want to be more realistic – it isn’t about promising to run a marathon every few weeks or setting difficult aims for ourselves. Just to get out more, be more active every week and feel healthier – both physically and mentally.
3. Practice Mindfulness
This year, let’s aspire to be more mindful of how we treat others, as well as how we treat ourselves.
Being mindful of how you treat others can be as simple as how you react to difficult situations. For example if someone loses their cool, try to keep yours and respond with a sincere smile.
When we practice mindfulness, we are becoming more aware of how we respond to demanding circumstances. It’s available to us in every moment if we take the time to appreciate it. Self-reflection will turn to positive action and we will all be able to spread the positive air around.
4. Spend More Time Offline
With the COVID-19 pandemic taking over our normal lives (aka life before COVID), we now practice a new norm that took a long time for us to get used to. Now, technology is our new best friend – we use it for work, to communicate, to find food and even for transportation.
However we need to remember – a balance is important. Being cooped up at home due to Work From Home (WFH) restrictions for example, might be taking a toll on most of us.
Let’s recalibrate, refresh and revive our ‘offline’ communication, our outdoor activities that some of us have been neglecting for so long.
5. Donate every month, Be a GEM!
Similar to cultivating a good sleeping habit, we should all strive to cultivate a good habit in donating regularly.
While we are able to spend every month on different subscriptions, for example our Netflix and Spotify subscriptions, why not spend money that will benefit others, rather than ourselves?
At Global Ehsan Relief we offer the GEMs program, where you can Give Every Month for as low as $10! You will be able to join our community of monthly donors and help us create life-changing projects for thousands of people worldwide. Your generous monthly donations will automatically support our work around the world.
Previously, we might tend to ditch our New Year’s resolutions even before it’s February. Ultimately, even though we might be as great at sticking to our goals, keeping them simple and consistent might just help us be a little bit better at making it a habit for the entire year.
