Rethink New Year – If you see New Year’s resolutions as an

If you see New Year’s resolutions as an opportunity to set goals and enrich your life, instead of trying to force changes you’re not really interested in, you have a much better chance of success. How about a list to support your educational goals, such as songs for bands, genres or periods you’d like to explore? For starters, check out the Spotify playlist the teacher created to get you excited. According to a U.S. News & World report, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail quickly – in the second week of February. As a music teacher, how would you feel about creating a monthly playlist? It could be songs that reflect your taste in pop music, such as a playlist for “Beatlemania” or “Boy Bands Forever.” You might think that New Year’s resolutions are a recent phenomenon, perhaps triggered by a 1970s ad campaign. With that in mind, there are several ways to make New Year’s resolutions that will challenge you to achieve something grand in 2021. First, set non-specific goals, such aseating healthier. “‘ Second, your resolutions don’t seem to be very satisfying. Swap a bar of chocolate for a daily snack of peanut butter in an apple, and you get 4.4 grams of fiber in an apple and 1.9 grams in two tablespoons of peanut butter, which is 6.3 grams of the 30 grams you should eat daily, according to the Mayo Clinic. Try making quarterly resolutions – instead of annual ones – a trick Gretchen Rubin learned through luck and habits. An article in Business Insider magazine says that people tend not to make resolutions for a variety of reasons. On a personal level, cleaning your workspace may seem overwhelming, but what if you took something off your desk every day, at home or school, year-round? Soon stacks of notes, papers and files would be tame. The first New Year’s resolutions would have been made 4,000 years ago by the ancient Babylonians. Break those resolutions down into individual meetings–personal or virtual–with small groups of students, giving you the opportunity to connect more with each student and learn about “their” strengths and goals. In fact, it offers all sorts of ways to approach resolutions, from creating a club with others to assessing your own personality. Keep in mind that vague goals such as “healthy eating” usually don’t work well. She is a wellness editor for Spirituality and Health magazine, a practicing yogi, and often writes about health and beauty for other publications, including The Complete Guide to Gut Health and Look Young Now.