Want some ideas for New Year's resolutions you can actually keep? Check out these practical mommy goals that will have you focusing on what matters most and help you stick to them throughout the year.
The beginning of the new year makes everyone want to start fresh, do better and become the amazing person they know they could be if they just eat a few more vegetables and hop on the treadmill occasionally. Yes, we are all superheroes with a few bad habits.
The truth is, New Year’s resolutions are hardly ever kept because we aim too high. We commit to fad diets of eating only juice and air. We buy exercise equipment that we just know is the missing link to our success. We promise to change overnight into the most amazing, disciplined, hard-core person anyone has ever seen. This year will be different. We will be different.
By February, we are back in our old routines, eating fast food and piling dirty laundry on that massive treadmill in our bedroom.
As mothers, we do it, too. We resolve not to yell at our kids and to spend more time enjoying the small details of our children’s lives. We commit to becoming the kind of mother we read about in parenting books. Our children will honor us, and other mothers will stand in awe of our perfection.
Fast forward to February. Life is just as hectic as ever, and we snap at little Johnny because he stopped to look at a worm while we carry an entire grocery store in bags on our arms. In that moment, we realize we can’t do it. We are not that mom in the parenting book, and we might as well give up our ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky resolutions. What’s one more mommy fail among so many, right?
So this year, I’m being a little more realistic with my resolutions. I commit right now not to become the most amazing Mother of the Year parent in 2016. But I can also resolve to take baby steps by making more practical resolutions that I can actually keep this year without adding another fail to my mommy ego.