New Year's Resolutions

Every beginning of every year people make outrageous resolutions for the New Year and very rarely stick with them all year long.  I have learned over the past few years to only have 3 New Year's resolutions in order for you to stick to them.  Last year, my #1 resolution was to stop dying my hair myself.  Ever since I was 14, I started dying my hair every couple of months.  One month I would have platinum blonde hair, the next it would be dark brown.  I was nonsensical about my hair and was never truly satisfied with it.  In order to stop this never-ending cycle of constantly damaging my hair, I decided that my New Year's Resolution was to no longer dye my own hair and to only get it done minimum every 3 months.  I am proud to say that I successfully did not dye my own hair and that I only dyed my hair 2 times last year!  For anyone that knows me they know that is quite an impressive thing.  I am now confident that once I set my mind on something, I know I can accomplish it with time and effort.  Nowadays, I am terrified at the thought of dying my own hair and I can officially say I kicked that bad habit.  With my new found confidence, I wanted to share my 3 resolutions for this year.

1. Become a vegetarian
-Becoming a vegetarian can be very difficult for some and a breeze for others.  Most people I know that have tried it have failed because they quit eating meat cold turkey.  (No pun intended)  So I decided to cut things out little by little until I am a full-blown vegetarian.  For the past month I have cut out all cow and pig meats.  To my surprise it has been a fairly easy change and I have only had a craving for a cheeseburger a few times.  Once I am 100% satisfied without those two meat sources I will cut out turkey and chicken.  I know that chicken will probably be the hardest meat to cut out because I do eat it so frequently and that is why I am taking baby steps to insure that I will be successful.  At this moment, I am shooting for being completely vegetarian by summer time.

2. Growing out my hair

-I am continuing on the hair resolution this year because I have always wanted long, lustrous locks like Blake Lively and Amanda Seyfried.  Since I have always been dying and frying my hair I have never been able to accomplish it.  Now that I have overcome my addiction to hair dying, I am confident I can have my own dazzling hair like those beautiful ladies.  In order to hopefully speed up this process, I have been taking a daily hair vitamin and doing weekly hair masks.  My hair masks mostly consist of coconut oil because it has nutrients that help hair grow and it keeps it moisturized.  Another trick I use when I wash my hair is to only shampoo your scalp and condition your ends.  By only shampooing your scalp, you are clearing the hair follicles of any debris that has clogged them and preventing hair from growing.  You only want to condition your ends because that part of your hair is fragile and can break off, which prevents hair from growing as well.  If you are shampooing all your hair, you are stripping the moisture from your ends and drying them out.  When you condition all your hair, you are clogging the hair follicle that you just cleaned out.  That it is why it is best to shampoo only your scalp and condition your ends.

3. Maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle
- Yes, I know that about 95% of the population has this resolution and most of them do not keep it.  I personally believe that they do not keep it because they only say that they "want to lose weight" and do not set specific goals.  That is why I haven't kept that resolution each year, but it is time for it to actually stick this time.  That is why I devised a simple plan to help me get there.  Instead of just being broad, I decided to make individual goals to help me achieve the big picture.  Some of my simple goals are:

1. Work out 3 times a week

2. Hike 1 day a week

3. Start cooking more and learning new vegetarian recipes 

Those are a few of the things I am going to start doing in order to be successful at my New Year's resolution.  I feel that you can be successful if you make small goals that lead to the main goal instead of overwhelming yourself with one BIG goal and being intimidated by it.  

 

I am going into this new year with newly discovered confidence that I will be able to achieve my resolutions.  I know a year from now I will be able to look back and feel accomplished. 

Thanks for reading.