My New Year Resolutions

New Year is such a wonderful time, including in a sense that we can all reflect on the year that passed. Alongside several personal achievements, and achievements of my friends and family that are so worth celebrating, I also looked at the year of 2018 in a healthy critical way: At mistakes I did, things that could’ve been handled better. Hens my 2019 resolutions list. Perhaps we could inspire one another? Please share your resolutions in the comments below!

1. Learn a new language.

I’ve been trying (on and off) to learn Chinese. The characters meaning is so intriguing. I feel it’s a whole different world and my view on many things would have been so different if I had grown up reading and writing Chinese. To give you one example, Chinese character for “tolerance” or “forbearance” is composed of two characters. At the top there is a character for a sharp blade or a knife. At the bottom of the character “tolerance” there is a character that means “heart”. Together these two characters mean to stab a heart, which, of course is very painful. But if you look at the bottom character for “heart” it appears firm and steady, as if it’s not being effected at all by the knife. Thus this “unmoved heart” represents forbearance or tolerance.

I’d really like to reach this state of forbearance one day 🙂

Isn’t this fascinating language?

I have to say though, I’m not expecting myself to speak fluent Mandarin in a year, but I’d like to be able to read some books in Chinese and understand at least 40-60% of it. It might still sound a bit too ambitious. A friends of mine, who grew up in China and Mandarin is her first language, encouraged me tremendously by saying, that if I learn the 100 simple characters (that make up the rest of the 80K characters) it’ll enable me to understand about 30% of the written material.

Now, 100 characters in 365 days don’t sound that unrealistic to learn, do they?

 

2. Take a good care of myself.

I’m a working mom of two. Naturally, it doesn’t leave me with a whole lot free time. In the new year I’d like to take care of myself by:

– doing daily exercises,

– reading for an hour or two books of my choice,

– do a facial (probably at home, still counts) once a week,

– keep my gray hair under control at all times,

– make sure I don’t have chipped nails or nail polish.

These sorts of things.

 

3. Not spend a dime on something I don’t need.

You know those subscription boxes that supposedly of a great value only to be filled with made in China stuff that you would never buy or find a use for, not even now that they’ve been delivered to your doorstep? I’ve decided to stop buying anything that I don’t absolutely need or want, and chose myself.

 

4. Choose quality over quantity.

I’d like to try asking myself if what I do or buy, or plan, or spend my time, efforts, and money on is something that could benefit others in some meaningful way or not? I want to remove as much rubbish from my life and my family’s life as possible. I have a few charities that I’ve been contributing to in the past 15 years or so. Instead of wasting my time on something I most likely going to regret doing/buying, I’m thinking of contributing more to these charities, for example.

 

5. Continue spending quality time with my family.

We spend a lot of time together: Having dinner together almost every night, we cook together often, do shopping, play charades, volunteer for local charities, travel and explore different cities in the USA every few months, we go to symphony performances, and visit museums. I love these, I love hearing my kids laughing, love listening of how their day went at school. This year, I’d love to go to Hawaii with my husband and kids. It’s a little pricey trip, so I hope my husband and I will be able to save up some funds for the trip for the four of us.

The only thing I’m thinking of adding here this year is to spend more time with my husband, just the two of us. Our kids are not little toddlers anymore, and we would be nice to allocate some more time solely for each other.

 

7. Master (or at least try to) some crafting techniques.

I love craft, all kinds of it, from crocheting and sewing to bead work, and embroidery. Looking back at the crafts I’ve done in the past three years or so, I’ve noticed that I got so caught up in all these “hacks” that the clothes I’ve produced and embroidery I’ve finished–all of them are just quick fixes and won’t be worn for long. This year, during a research for an article, I came across several books and works of craftsmen from XIV through XIX centuries. The beauty of their workmanship truly stunned me. I’m thinking this year I’ll try to bring that inspiration from the masters of the past in my own DIYs. I’ve found a few wonderful bloggers who publish vintage women’s magazines, and my plan is to do at least one proper project a month and share it with you here on VLifeStyle.org Maybe someone will want to join me?

 

8. Loose weight.

I know, seems like a cliche kind of resolution, but I’d like to loose around 10 pounds in the new year. I’m not going on any particular diet, just will try to work on self-restraint a bit more (and more regularly). I think self-restraint is a great character trait in all respects, not only when it comes to gluttony. By the way, I’ve managed not to gain a single pound over these winter holidays, which serves as a great encouragement for me. In general I don’t eat junk food, I cook pretty much every day; that also makes it easier to monitor what goes into my plate. I’m not big on ice-cream or cookies, but have little self-control around breads and pastas, sigh. In the coming year, I’m thinking to gain that control, it’s my body after all, so it’s up to me what becomes of it. I really want to feel light and confident, removing those extra pounds would be of a big help in this regard.

 

 

Please share what’s on your resolution list!!!

Trending now: