Popular New Year Habits – What Worked & What Didn’t Work For Me

The cliche New Year habits and whether or not they worked for me.

I feel like most people already know that the new year is where people decide that they’re going to start a new habit. And that’s me. No matter how cliche it is, I’m always going to try to start new habits when the new year begins.

Basically for this blog post, I gathered the 10 most cliche new year habits. I Googled the most cliche new year habits/resolutions, and gathered what appeared the most. I’m going to share with you how each of these worked for me since I had tried these out this year one way or another.

Whether you want to set new goals for the new year or not, I think you’ll get a lot from this blog post. I’ve also noted down some of my thoughts with each of these habits, and how it could be improved for better success.

And now, I’m going to share with you all the common new year habits that I gathered. And I’ll share with you how it worked for me. This is based on my personal experience, and for sure it’s going to be different for everyone. I will provide some insights on each experience that I hope will help you if you decide to build this habit.

Exercise More

This is a habit that has already been a big part of my life. I have no issues with motivating myself to exercise, especially with my walks and going to Muay Thai classes.

If you’re wanting to make exercise a new habit for you, here’s the most important motivational tool:

you need to do an activity you enjoy!

Honestly, the best way to motivate yourself to exercise is to actually do an activity that you enjoy.

I know this because I remember that doing cardio on a treadmill was boring to me and it didn’t motivate me to exercise. I’d find excuses to not do it.

But morning walks and going to Muay Thai is what I LOVE doing, and I don’t need to think twice.

Lose Weight

I’ve read many New Year Resolutions/Goals articles, and losing weight is on every list.

Here’s why I didn’t achieve this habit…

I said good-bye to diet culture. I said goodbye to putting my worth based on what it says on a scale. And I found that making this a main focus in my life did more harm than good to my mind.

Instead, I changed the goal to this:

• Improve my relationship with food.
• Improve my relationship with my body.

I’m not saying that I don’t care if my body is unhealthy because I’ve scrapped diets. Instead, I’m improving my relationship with my body by taking care of it. I’m still mindful of what I’m eating and make sure that I’m eating good foods. I’m still making sure that I exercise and move my body. BUT I don’t focus so much on losing weight but instead focusing on just simply taking care of it.

I’ll admit that my relationship with my body and food is a work in progress. But it’s something I’m continuing to work on in 2023.

Be More Organized

Overall, I feel like this year I’ve always found different ways and techniques to be more organized with my life. It’s a progress over perfection for this one.

I felt like this habit in itself is very vague because there are so many things that goes into being organized.

For instance, I do like to think I’m very organized with my life in terms of:

• Planning my schedule
• Managing my time
• Organizing my systems
• Organizing my lists

But here’s what I still need to work on:

• Decluttering things I don’t need
• Cleaning after myself RIGHT away
• Keeping things neat

I’m thinking that for the new year, instead of simply saying that I want to build the habit of “being more organized”, I specified into one of those.

Have New Skills & Hobbies

First of all, I felt like this one was a bit too vague. I felt that it would be much better if the habit was just the specific skill or hobby that you wanted to start.

That’s why, I turned this one into several new skills and hobbies that I wanted to try.

And while I’ve tried many new hobbies (I’ll talk about the ones I’ve tried out later), there has been a few that had become regular activities!

• Touring small towns
• Self-Dates at Arcade
• Bowling
• Watching theatre shows

In terms of skills, I don’t think I’ve started new skills, but definitely improved all my existing ones (professional life wise and personal life wise!)

Eat Healthy

I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t eat healthy! But eating healthy wasn’t the main goal for me.

Instead, the main habit/goal for me is to eat mindfully and create weekly meal plans.

While I admit that I haven’t been 100% perfect with this, there has definitely been progress. Holidays and other rest days aside, I’m more intentional when I eat. Since I started living on my own, creating weekly meal plans was a must because it helped me know what food I’m putting in my body.

Now that I’m thinking about it the habit to “eat healthy” is also very vague because this would be different for everybody too. And also, this could be specified into other habits that could be much more helpful for people.

Read More

I’ve been a big reader for a few years now, specifically with personal development books. In fact, I get ideas for blogs from books I have read.

But for anyone who wants to start reading as a habit, here are a few tips that helped me make this habit instant:

1. Start with 2 pages – This works the same way as saying that you’ll only spend 5 minutes on social media, and you end up spending 1 hour. Say to yourself that you just need to read 2 pages, and most times you’ll find yourself wanting to read more. It’s always the starting part that’s hard.
2. Put a book where you see it – In the beginning, putting a book by my pillow was a great way to remind myself to read. Seeing it constantly just tells your brain that you should do something about it.
3. Start by reading books you love – Just like with exercise, the best way to get into a reading habit is to start by reading books you enjoy. Of course, reading is going to be boring if you’re not interested in the book.

Wake up earlier

My default is 5:30am. I personally love waking up early because it’s where I have the most creative energy and focus.

But there are times when I realistically shouldn’t wake up at 5:30am and let myself sleep extra. On most Sundays, I tend to sleep in a little later. Recently on days when I had my cycle, I would let myself sleep extra.

I guess you can say that instead of having the habit to wake up earlier, I have the habit to sleep more. Again, this wasn’t 100% perfect this year, but I like to think that I’m a lot easier on myself when I don’t end up waking up at 5:30am.

Do Something New & Different Every Single Day

I’ll admit that I changed this one a bit to make this achievable for me.

I felt that doing something new & different every day wasn’t going to a realistic habit to set. Instead, I changed it to do a new activity every month. That was achievable for me, and that’s what I achieved!

I’m proud to say that every single month, I tried out a new activity. Yes, there were some that I tried and felt like I didn’t enjoy it as much, but there were quite a few that I’ve still been doing! Here is what I tried this year:

• January – Kayaking – this is a great summer activity that I’ll do on vacations.
• February – Touring small towns – did this one every two months!
• March – Fly a plane – did this for my 21st birthday.
• April – Go to the arcade
• May – Paddleboarding
• June – Painting
• July – At-Home Spa Days
• August – Nail Salon Spa Days
• September – Coffee Self-Dates
• October – Bowling
• November – Watching shows at theatre
• December – Van Life Picnics

Have More Fun

I bet you have noticed a pattern so far -> most of these new year habits/goals/resolutions are very vague! (I talk about that in this blog post)

I turned this habit/goal into this:

• minimum ONE self-date a week.
• minimum ONE hour of self-care a day.

And I must be doing something fun.

When you think about it, the habit to “have more fun” is very vague and doesn’t have too much detail on how exactly you’ll have fun.

Some may find that watching TV is fun and some may think that reading is fun. What everyone finds fun is different.

Go on My Phone Less

This is an extremely hard one for me considering that I use my phone a lot for content creation. I’ll admit that if you take content creation out of the equation, I’ll have less screen time.

That’s why I’ve set boundaries on my phone instead. I set boundaries for when I can go on social media, do some random internet scrolling, and how long I can do it.

But I was not 100% perfect with this. I still find myself sometimes going on social media longer than I should’ve, and scrolling through the internet more. But in 2023, I am intending that I reaffirm these boundaries more and I’m actually looking for some tools that can help me with that.

From my personal experience, I think that simply “going on your phone less” can be more specified for more success. I’m going to try it for myself, but I think that setting boundaries with my phone use can be more helpful than simply telling myself to “go on my phone less”.

Take a SMALL STEP

List down 3 new habits that you want to start doing for the new year, and don’t forget to make them specific!

I recommend you read this blog post, New Year Goal Setting Routine to help you create your goals and an action plan to achieve them! You can even download the Goal Setting Workbook from the Free Resources Library!

Setting Goals Don’t Matter If You Don’t Take Action

And that’s a truth!

There are so many common habits that people want to start doing for the new year. But what’s more important than setting goals is actually taking action.

And just remember that you don’t need to be 100% in it. You just need to keep making progress and learning as you go. Then soon enough, you’ll be consistent with the habit to the point that it’ll become automatic.

If you need more help with your habits, I recommend you read these blog posts:

• How to Build Life Changing Habits

• The Best Alternative to Habit Tracking
• How to Level Up Your Habits

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