If you’re anything like us, January 1st was lost in a post-New Year’s Eve fizz-daze with left over canapés and with all the good intentions to start January properly, tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is here and it’s not too late to forge long-lasting, good habits.
Here’s our round up of our 2016 goals and resolutions to help you (and us!) kick-start the year.
1. Discover the ‘Staycation’
With weather like this, it’s tempting – if not a rite of passage – to delve deep into travel brochures and jump on the first fight offering days spent horizontally in a sun-drenched stupor complete with rum punch and cocktail umbrella in hand. But what if you could save yourself a small fortune and instead discover the jewels of your home country? For reasonable local getaways, check out LivingSocial Escapes and Groupon Getaways or even have a browse on AirBnB. Sun may not be guaranteed but a log fire coupled with glass of red wine sure is a good substitute.
2. Find an exercise you LOVE
This is huge. Endorphins, better moods, lower blood pressure, weight loss, better skin…the list of pulse-raising pros is endless. For some (the lucky few), exercising is a reliable stress-buster that gets us through the week. But for a lot of us, exercise is a chore. This is why it can be easy to slip into binge-exercise mode, often losing focus after a few weeks and then only regaining composure after several lbs have unwittingly reappeared.
Why not find something you enjoy that keeps you active throughout the year AND that you could class as a hobby? Re-discover your love of all-night dancing. Borrow a puppy to take out for a run (borrowmydoggy.com is a great site to find owners in need of local dog walkers). Feeling stressed? Sign up to a local boxercise class. Amateur photographer? Practise your compositions on longer hikes and trickier terrains. Anything that gets that pulse going is a winner.
3. Try something that scares you…
You’re not going to get anywhere nestling within your comfort zone. Take a risk! Eleanor Roosevelt herself said that you should do one thing every day that scares you and we couldn’t agree more. This is where the magic happens! This January, make it your mission to be fearless in your pursuits and reap the satisfaction of knowing you couldn’t have tried harder. Want to learn where to start? Give this a whirl…
4. Quash ‘fomo’ and embrace a Digital Detox
‘Fomo’ aka ‘the fear of missing out’ haunts our generation. Having Facebook notifications flash up on your phone showing ‘friends’ (I use this term loosely here for obvious reasons) cooking a better meal than you, having a better holiday than you, having a better dressed kid than you (!), has resulted in wide-spread dissatisfaction with our own day-to-day happenings. Instead, embrace a digital detox and discover just how good it can feel to be switched off.
5. Get your colours done
Winter can leave us feeling especially dull so this is our top pick-me-up tip of the day.
Notice how some colours you wear leave you feeling drab and others get you looking like a knock-out? It’s no secret that our skin tones rely on the right hues to look their best, so invest in a colour expert to guide you through the tones you should be choosing. Strapped for cash? Nip to your local paint shop and pick up a couple of swatches. Hold each swatch up against your skin and you’ll soon pick out the colours that are right for you. Then rummage through your wardrobe and cull the non-conformers!
6. Learn the language of food…
Did you know that there are more that 6000 “food additives – flavourings, glazing agents, improvers, bleaching agents” used in modern day food manufacturing? Even ‘natural’ colourings, additives etc are often the result of a lengthy chemical extraction process. These days, it can seem impossible to avoid additives but learning to educate ourselves can mean we make the right choices and avoid unwanted nasties. Want to read more? This Guardian article is very interesting…
Inspired to take action and press restart this January? Let us know how you get on!
Pookie Team x