At the beginning of the year, we have new resolutions and we are motivated to improve our lifestyle through healthy habits and self-care. What happens after a month? We are less motivated and start coming up with excuses and leaving things to later. I know, I’ve been guilty of that too… But what if I tell you there are good strategies and tools that will help you stick to your New Year resolution. Today I’m going to share with you some tips that helped me stay motivated as well as tools that helped me stick to my goals and track my progress!
Importance of Self-Care
Taking care of yourself through healthy habits such as going for a walk, meditating, doing yoga, eating healthy, or spending time on a hobby helps you relieve stress and be in connection with yourself. There are 6 areas of self-care in total: Physical, Psychological, Emotional, Spiritual, Personal, and Professional. While we all want to practice self-care for some reason, we end up prioritizing other things than our own well-being. Some people also might think that self-care means being selfish and end up abandoning their needs. But caring for oneself is a necessity and a crucial part of our well-being. Here are different ways self-care can improve your wellness:
- Stress and Anxiety Reduction: We are all affected by stress and chronic stress can lead to various health issues, such as heart disease, obesity, and weakened immune function. Engaging in self-care activities can help reduce stress and anxiety levels as well as live a more relaxed life. You can schedule a 15-minute exercise session, go for a walk, do breathing exercises, meditate to relax, and get a good night’s sleep. Activities like meditation and mindfulness can contribute to better mental well-being.
- Improved Immune Function: Taking care of your body through proper nutrition and hydration, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep can strengthen your immune system, making you more resilient to illnesses. Sometimes we underestimate the importance of sleep or nutrition but it is a game-changer. If you keep yourself well-nourished, hydrated, and rested you’ll have more energy and feel happier.
- Prevention of Burnout: Regular self-care can prevent burnout, which is characterized by emotional exhaustion and reduced effectiveness. It helps you recharge and maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life. Taking the time to check in with yourself and tending to your needs allows you to fill in your cup.
- Increasing self-worth: The more you take care of yourself, the more in connection you are to yourself and the more self-love you will cultivate. Making time for self-care communicates to yourself that your needs are important, contributing to a positive self-image. When your core needs are met regularly you prove to yourself that you are worthy of care and attention.
- Improved quality of life: When you practice self-care different areas of your life improve as well. You have a more relaxed life, develop healthy habits that improve your health condition, engage in positive and meaningful relationships, and have a good work-life balance.
So let’s make 2024 the year in which we take care of ourselves and prioritize our health and happiness. I promise you, your future self will thank you and be proud of you!
Tips That Will Help You Achieve Your Objectives
These are some things that help me stay motivated and not lose sight of my objectives. Having a plan and tracking your progress gives you a sense of direction and makes it easier for you to stick to your resolution. When you reach small milestones like exercising for 10 minutes every day or drinking 8 glasses of water per day it makes you more committed to your goals and increases your motivation.
- Create a Plan: Develop a detailed plan outlining how you will achieve your resolutions. Include specific actions, timelines, and milestones to track your progress. When you have a plan, it is easier for you to focus on the actions you will take rather than wondering what you need to do to reach your goal.
- Break It Down: Divide your larger goals into smaller, manageable tasks. This makes the process more achievable and allows you to celebrate small victories along the way. Begin with small, manageable changes that are easier to integrate into your routine. Once these become habits, you can gradually increase the difficulty or set new goals. One of my resolutions for this year is to have a healthy lifestyle so every day I make sure I have a big glass of water when I wake up and before I go to bed. It’s super simple right? But it’s a way to keep myself hydrated and healthy.
- Stay Flexible: Be open to adjusting your plan if needed. Life is unpredictable, and circumstances may change, so be willing to adapt your approach if necessary. I know it can be frustrating but be kind to yourself throughout the journey. A lot of things are outside our control so it’s important to understand that setbacks are part of the process. Self-compassion can help you bounce back and stay motivated. Never underestimate the efforts you have put towards your objectives; you are doing your best and that’s what really matters.
- Reward Yourself: Acknowledge and celebrate your achievements along the way, no matter how small. Recognizing your progress will help reinforce positive behaviors and motivate you to keep going. Treat yourself when you reach specific milestones to maintain motivation. Maintain a positive mindset and focus on the benefits of achieving your resolutions. A positive attitude can help you overcome challenges and setbacks.
- Visualize Success: Picture yourself achieving your goals. Visualization can be a powerful tool in maintaining motivation and focus. Visualization also helps you manifest what you want in your life so create a vision board, imagine yourself reaching that goal and how it would make you feel. Another one of my goals this year is to have beautiful skin. I have started using tretinoin to get rid of my acne it is a long process. Meanwhile, I keep visualizing myself as having clear and glowing skin!
- Track Your Progress: Keep a journal or use an app to monitor your progress regularly. Seeing the positive changes can motivate you to continue working towards your goals. I don’t know about you but I love checking off boxes and receiving rewards when I reach milestones!
5 Tools To Track Your Progress and Stay Motivated
1. Finch
This is one of my favorite apps! It is a self-care app where you get to take care of Finch through taking care of yourself! It helps you feel positive and sends you cute notifications to cheer you up or motivate you throughout the day. Start your morning with a quick mood check and end your day with a brief gratitude journaling to reflect on your day and remember the good things that happened. The app is very easy to use and offers multiple tools that help you manage your well-being. You can choose between guided meditations, journaling, or coping strategies. The app has also goal-setting tools where you can set personal goals and track your progress.
Your pet celebrates your daily small wins, fostering a sense of achievement and motivation. The mood tracking tool helps you monitor your emotional states over time and makes it easier for you to identify patterns and triggers, and enabling better emotional regulation and self-awareness. The Finch app also allows you to set reminders for your tasks and has a reward system. Whenever you complete your daily tasks and goals you can earn rainbow stones and seasonal items. Another thing I really love about the app is that you have community support where you can connect with other users through virtual support groups where you can motivate and encourage each other.
2. Insight Timer
Insight Timer is a meditation app that makes meditation easy and engaging. It has made it to the list “Apps of the Year Winner” in TIME magazine and Women’s Health. The app offers features such as relaxation sessions, journal prompts, breathing exercises, guided visualizations, and even soothing music. Insight Timer has one of the biggest free guided meditation libraries out there. The app also teaches you how to deal with stress and anxiety as well as how to get better quality sleep through different meditation and mindfulness exercises. If you’re like me and need to listen to something to stop thinking and fall asleep the app also bedtime stories! It’s also great for people who want to get through addictions, improve their relationships or leadership skills, and cultivate self-compassion.
You get it, the app is all-encompassing. You can even participate in different challenges, choose when you want to meditate and for how long, and you can even attend events like yoga or meditation classes. There is also a community hub that allows you to connect with people interested in the same topics as you and you can learn about other meditation/ yoga practices. So, if you’re looking for people interested in the same things as you can meet amazing people in the app. I personally like the challenges because it motivates me and makes me accountable.
3. Fabulous:
If you want to build a strong foundation and build good habits this app is for you! Fabulous uses scientifically backed methods that help you slowly and intentionally build healthy habits. The app focuses on building healthy habits such as committing to fitness, introducing mindfulness, reducing anxiety, and improving your sleep. Fabulous sets up daily tiny tasks for you that turn into healthy routines. The first journey revolves around creating a healthy morning routine for yourself. The tasks are very easy the app will ask you to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning and to eat a healthy breakfast. The second and third journeys teach you how to adapt to your environment to be more successful and reevaluate your reactions to stress. You can also challenge yourself depending on the area you want to improve like mindset, lifestyle, productivity, movement, relationships …
The app will get a tailored list of tasks to complete in a time frame. You also have a community space where you can share your thoughts, get motivational quotes, learn about healthy coping strategies, and more. What I love about this app is that it is based on a behavioral approach that introduces small daily habits that will turn into long-term goals known as habit stacking. Once you are used to the small habits you can achieve profound lasting changes through consistency.
4. Dreamfora:
Dreamfora is a daily planner app that helps set achievable goals and objectives by simplifying and dividing them into small tasks and creating solid habits. You can adjust, change habits that the AI generated for you, and even set a date when you want to achieve your goal. Unlike the other apps, when it comes to goals you have eight categories focusing on different areas of your life such as learning, travel, leisure, finance, relationships, and general. The app also helps you schedule your day, improve productivity, and offer tailored plans to achieve specific goals. If you like taking notes and writing your ideas you have the notes features to do that. Dreamfora encourages you to develop habits through repetition, checking off boxes from your to-do list and easily tracking your progress. You also have milestones set for you when completed brings you closer to your goal.
One thing I really appreciate about this app is that whenever you use the app they send you quotes to inspire you and help you stay motivated and on track. The interface is user-friendly and cute which makes the experience more pleasant and exciting.
5. Gratitude
If you want to improve your mindset and be more positive there is a great app called Gratitude that helps you cultivate gratitude. The app provides a list of prompts to get you started if you’re not sure what to write about. You can journal about good things that happened on a specific day, write your own self-affirmations, and create a vision board. The app also offers different challenges so you can be consistent and make gratitude part of your routine. The challenges are different and cover different areas of your life so you don’t have to worry about getting bored or running out of things to be grateful for.
What I really like about the app is that it guides us and helps us reflect on things we take for granted or have forgotten about. I also love the fact that you can create your own positive affirmations based on what you want to focus on. If you’ve never done affirmations before, don’t worry I have a guide that will help you get started on positive affirmations. Another great thing about this app, you have a timeline and anniversaries so you can always look back on old entries and can be reminded of special days.
Find the right apps for you and stick to it, using too many apps will leave you scattered and might overwhelm you. Do your best to stick to your goals but don’t be too hard on yourself if you miss a day or two! Life happens and sometimes priorities might change depending on seasons and other factors. Remember you’re doing this for yourself so enjoy the journey and don’t forget to have fun!