By Nayana Mena

The start of the New year is fast approaching and with that comes a lot of change. Around this time of year people will come together to celebrate and make the most of being in each other’s company. People will also take the time to self-reflect and think about all the good things that have happened, like goals achieved and memories made as well as reminisce on the things that didn’t go so well in order to improve for the next year going forward. Around this time of year everyone prioritises self-growth, fulfilment, making goals and changing little things in one’s life to gradually become a ‘better’ person, which leads me on to our discussion about New Year’s resolutions and putting our goals into practice.

Let’s start by addressing what a ‘New Year’s resolution’ is. A New Year’s resolution is a tradition, most common in the Western World but also found in the Eastern World, in which a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behaviour, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their life at the start of a new year. Everyone’s goals for the new year can be different and personal to them however some common themes can be around education or one’s career, one’s finances, one’s health and eating healthy, improving one’s character, or just trying something new. New year’s resolutions can be a great starting point for anyone who has goals they want to achieve or changes to make but haven’t had the motivation to do it sooner.

While New Year’s resolutions are a great concept that many people partake in following the Christmas and festive period, a lot of us struggle to follow through with the goals that we have set in place. Now let’s look into why that is. For a lot of people, it is common to set a goal that isn’t realistic or pleasurable and so it becomes a chore to do. Sometimes we may completely decide to abstain from something that you love or enjoy doing which makes it a lot harder to keep consistent too in the long run. For example, many of us aim to quickly lose weight and begin eating healthy by completely removing all the foods that we like and enjoy from our diet. This can soon become a toxic and unhealthy obsession so when we may not receive the desired outcome, we tend to be hard on ourselves. To avoid this, I would suggest that instead of trying to completely abstain from the foods that we enjoy for a short period of time to achieve ‘quick’ results, we should instead aim to have a balanced diet and cut down on the less healthy foods while looking for a healthier alternative. This is a more reasonable demand to put on ourselves that we as people can be more consistent with, over a longer amount of time. This also helps it to become a habit and eventually a lifestyle choice rather than a short term or temporary fix. If healthy eating is one of your goals for next year, African Plate can surely help with your journey. A lot of our food products are organic and consist of many health benefits and we will have plenty of healthy recipes to share coming soon.

Now onto our African Plate Top tips….

Top tips when making New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Make it personal to you. Don’t try to copy everyone else and do what everybody else is doing. Instead make your goals about you and your personal development as your aim should be to make yourself happy and not live for anybody else.
2. Make them realistic. Choose goals that you know are attainable so you can be proud when completing them as opposed to feeling deflated from failing to do so.
3. Challenge Yourself. That being said, do try to challenge yourself and try new things as this is the only way you will truly and grow further (escape comfort zone)
4. Visualise who you want to become. Doing this allows you to establish what goals are more of a priority for right now than others. It also acts as a motivator for when you start to doubt yourself.
5. Lastly, get your friends and family involved. Not only is this fun to do, but it helps when you know you’re not alone when trying new things and having someone to hold you accountable might be the needed push you need to stay on top of your goals in the New Year.

Let us know if you enjoyed this blog and what New Year’s resolutions you’ll be taking up next year?