We’re days away from the year-end (yes! We can’t believe it either) and you know what that means – It’s the time of the year to reflect upon the ways we want to improve ourselves and come up with a better list of new year resolutions or vision for the next 12 months. 

Whether you’ve planned to get more exercise, lose weight, eat healthier or save more money; we wish you the best and hope that you will be able to accomplish your personal goals without falling off the bandwagon too often (trust us, it will happen, but you’re going to have to get back on that horse and do your best to achieve your goals). 

For some people, coming up with a whole new list of resolutions or even trying to maintain the ones from the previous year can be daunting tasks. Hence we’ve decided to lend a helping hand with some useful tips for those who want to change their overall lifestyle into a more positive and healthier one in 2020. So without further ado, here are the top 3 most common New Year’s resolutions and how you can achieve them.

Resolution #1: Becoming a ‘Morning Person’

The thought of waking up early and experiencing the joys morning can bring – like witnessing the beauty of sunrise as the warm rays filter into you room through glistening windows, or stretching out to the cheerful sound bird songs as you leisurely get ready for work; bright-eyed and bushy tail is (and for some, still is) a dear wish that many people (especially night owls and in more recent cases, permanently exhausted pigeons) harbour. 

If you’re one of those people who find waking up early to be a challenge, well you’re not the only one. There’s plenty of reasons why someone might have trouble waking up in the mornings, ranging from the most basics, (like not getting sufficient sleep the night before) to something more medically serious (like parasomnias).

Still, that doesn’t mean that you can’t train yourself to wake up early in the morning and take advantage of the early hours to do something productive. A lot of it stems from habit and besides getting yourself on a proper sleep schedule, there are plenty of ways to encourage yourself to become more awake and alert before 8 am. For example: 

Start Your Mornings With A Cup Of Tea.

There is nothing like having a nice hot (and caffeinated!) beverage to boost up your energy levels and make you feel more human in the mornings. As you all know, when it comes to waking up and staying energetic throughout the day, anything with caffeine automatically becomes something of a godsend. A lot of people opt for coffee as their go-to morning caffeine fix, but despite having its advantages, coffee is also a diuretic which can lead to dehydration.

In hindsight, it’s better and safer to drink a cup of tea to boost up your energy in the morning. Yes, you read it right! While it’s true that tea contains trace amounts of caffeine, it’s also one of those drinks that comes with a boat load of healthy benefits that coffee sadly does not share. In comparison to coffee, tea has a much lower caffeine content and it also has a regulated system that’ll allow for your body to get the right amount of caffeine to feel energised without the negative effects of a mid-morning caffeine crash. 

Besides, sipping on a soothing cup of tea in the morning will also give you a few extra minutes for yourself to gather your thoughts and to plan your day ahead. This is great if you’re also trying to be more mindful as this relaxing ritual can also help to make you more productive. It’s even better if your drink also comes with quirky mug that’s full of personality! Not only will the tea do you some good, but drinking from a mug that’s been decorated with your favourite photos or quotes will also help put you in a better mood to kickstart your day. 

Pro tip: Not a bad way to start the morning, wouldn’t you say? Besides the tea, the vessel in which the tea resides a.k.a. The mug can also play a significant part in ensuring you stick to your resolutions. Getting something like an inspirational or fun photo mug might seem like a strange move, but trust us. It really works to help people stay motivated and boost their moods.

Resolution #2: Become More Organised 

In this day and age, having a fast-paced work environment where you’re kept constantly busy throughout the week and have loads of deadlines that are due at seemingly the same time is quite normal. Some people even thrive in this busy and hectic work environment  with not a complaint or a hair out of place. For others, this kind of lifestyle (especially if there’ used to something a little more laid back) can be quite stressful. Not only that, it can also lead to a few bad habits; like leaving piles of work in half done as you switch between one task to another. 

One of the best ways to help make you feel more in control of your working environment is to stay organised. We know this might sound like an all too simple fix, but trust us. Making it your goal to stay organised throughout the year will help you immensely; and not just in work too! 

So besides spending a good amount of time decluttering your space, here are some things you can do to help get more organised in 2020 and meet your next resolution goals:

Making Use Of Calendars

Organised people are not born organised. They’re just people who ended up cultivating good habits that help them to stay organised. One of the habits that we’ve found a lot of organised people have in common is that they usually plan out what they want to do before executing it. 9/10 times, these methods work for them and by planning out their tasks, they’re able to focus and ignore unnecessary distractions that could waste their time and keep them from achieving their goals.

Which is why getting yourself a calendar is the first step in getting you organised. As many of you know, calendars are extremely useful things. They help us plan, keep track of tasks and if you get the right type, can even be used for agendas or planners. By getting yourself a personalised and eye-catching calendar, you’ll also have the added benefit of having something that can motivate you to help keep organised – maybe a picture of your dream vacation destination of a quote that will help you want to maintain your resolutions.

When it comes to selecting your calendars in order to help you stay on track, there’s plenty to choose from that serves different purposes. Calendar cards for example, can be used to plan monthly activities as you can put down notes behind each cards. Desk and wall calendars however, can be used for planning daily activities as well as mark down specific dates of important events.

By using a calendar to keep track of your progress, you’ll be able to know exactly what your priorities are and will be able to plan and allocate time for tasks and events accordingly – ensuring that you could manage your time efficiently on top of being productive. 

Pro Tip: Although the main purpose of calendars is to remind us of important dates and appointments, who says that they have to be boring? As a part of today’s generation, we’re all very familiar with the ‘hit and quit it’ habit – often times ditching something as soon as we get bored of them because they don’t look good or aren’t as fun. So to ensure that you’ll never get bored of using your calendars to plan your daily routine and stick to your resolution, why not personalise your calendars with inspirational words, pictures of your favourite actor or role-models or add other creative elements like stickers or song lyrics. You’ll definitely never get bored then and your 2020 resolutions of becoming more organised just got one step closer to becoming a reality.

Write Things Down On a Stylish Notebook

We all know someone that remembers every single task that has been assigned to them, important dates in their personal life, fun and interesting facts as well as the exact holiday dates. How’s that even possible? Are they using some kind of black magic to remember all those things? Or some cool memorization techniques? We may never know.

But, for those of us who don’t have the capacity to remember as much as our talented comrades, we can achieve something similar by forming this one particular good habit – which is simply writing things down on paper the good ol’ fashion way. 

Writing things down physically as opposed to taking digital notes, can actually help us remember the information much better. Some say it’s muscle memory but neuroscience explains that by having a visual clue, your brain tends to remember things so much better. 

There’s also the fact that by writing things down, it helps with the encoding process your brain goes through – which basically means that if you’re the one who wrote it down, chances are much higher that you’ll remember the information because you were the one to ‘generated the content’ – so to speak. 

Plus, writing down the important things, like your shopping list, holiday gift lists or important dates like meetings and birthdays is also pretty soothing and helps you to stay organised. By writing things down, not only will you never miss any important events again, but you can also plan and organise your time to ensure that you enjoy a more well balanced lifestyle.

Pro Tip: Instead of using the same book to jot down all your personal thoughts, tasks and  work/school notes, using a stylish and personalised notebook that were created specifically for each individual tasks will help you keep track of specific goals that you’ve set up for your New Year’s resolution. 

The reasons you should use separate notebooks for each task is because when you mix up all the information into a singular book, it can be much easier for you to become distracted by other things and information. 

Resolution #3: Becoming More Positive

“The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts”

In our society today, most people’s thoughts are relegated to the level of fantasy and extravagance and perhaps, for this reason, people are always left feeling unsatisfied or not feeling content about their life. Even those who make a good living and under stress control can still be unhappy as there are so many blessings that around them has been left unnoticed.

Well, we agree that it takes time and not easy for some people to find joy in little things around them, when they’re having a mishap in their life that troubles them. But It is not difficult either! All that you’ll need to change is your mindset and start noticing the blessings you’ve got around you. So Pixapals, If you’re ready to stop complaining  and create an automatic pathway to positive thoughts in 2020 these things will work for you: 

Practice Mindfulness

In a world where most of us are striving hard for success, desire for what we don’t have and to be someone we wish to be. We’ve forget to notice or appreciate what we have in our life. We become blind to all the little things that really matter to us and the main things that make our life so meaningful. Instead, we tend to focus on the problems that come our way and keep complaining about it. This habit of complaining is a negative habit that’ll surely steal our happiness and drag us to a negative thoughts that won’t get us far. So it’s quite necessary to break this habit by practising mindfulness and being thankful for all the blessings you’ve received so far.

Just look around you – Do you have an empty space on your wall? We bet you do. Why not turn that empty spot into a ‘wall of gratitude’ by decorating it with photo prints of all the things that make your happy and that you’re thankful for. It could be pictures of your family members, your friends or pets. It could be vacation photos, pictures of beautiful sceneries that touched your heart or even pictures of everyday things that make you happy – like a correctly spelled name on your Starbucks cup or a cute makeup look you adore. 

Believe us when we say that when you start keeping track of what makes you happy, you’ll find that you’re actually abundantly blessed. Every moment you spend with your loved ones are a form of blessing and the memories you create with them are a great thing to be cherished forever. It can be any moments you’ve spent with them- birthday functions, travel moments or just a normal chit chat. 

If you could look back at these memories- whether in the form of photo book, prints or any other items, during a bad phase in your life you’ll be able to remind yourself how blessed you are and divert your attention from any unwanted negative thoughts that blocks your mind from thinking about the steps you should take to solve the problems. By printing your memories on an adorable things that you can cherish, you’ll never feel difficult to stick on this new year resolution and achieve a positive result!

Stay Motivated With Posters

Whether you want to be successful in your education, job or even personal life, what drives you to make things happen is your high motivation level. But unfortunately, staying motivated is not as easy as we say it. This is because the feeling of being motivated is not a type of constant feeling that you can rely on. Sometimes you’ll feel it and other times you can’t even grab a measly corner of it no matter how much you try. It’s kind of feeling when you stare at your computer, make yourself willing to type, create or send an important work, but you find yourself simply going through motion and barely focus or care about the thing you are creating.

Hence, one of the best ways to keep yourself motivated and always think in a positive way is by putting up a personalised quote poster at your home or workplace. As everyone needs a little push at times to achieve the things they want to, creating a personalised quote poster that’ll remind you of the goal you want to achieve or something that fuel the fire in you will be a great way to keep you running for the success you are looking for.

Pro Tip: As you are allowed to add your photos and the wordings that inspires you, why not create a personalised photo poster with your iconic picture and your new year resolutions? By doing so  we’re sure that you’ll never forget about the promises you made to yourself and will definitely be able to achieve your goals in an effective way!

Now that you’ve read and got some brilliant ideas on the New Year Resolutions  that you can make for 2020 and the easiest ways to achieve them, feel free to visit the Pixajoy website, choose your favourites and give them a try!