Happy New Year! 2017 was quite a whirlwind of ups and downs for me. My husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, I went to my second Green Day (my favorite band) concert, and my sweet baby girl, Julia, was born! Julia’s birth and the week that followed were the scariest points of the year for me for sure. However, although 2017 changed me in so many ways, it also gave birth to a new me – a stronger, slightly braver woman, and I’m ready to embrace what 2018 has in store.

Although I’ve never been one to make new year’s resolutions, I do think the new year is a good opportunity to look at your life and think about where you can improve. I decided to come up with three simple goals for the new year that I’d like to work on. I kept them simple, and I think that is a good rule of thumb for these kinds of things. So here they are, my three simple self improvement goals for 2018:

Drink More Water

The first goal that I’d like to work on in 2018 is to drink more water.

When I was pregnant, I drank so much water. I usually topped off at more than a gallon a day! After Julia was born though, I fell off the wagon and drank less and less, and it has recently really caught up to me.

My current goal is to get back up to at least 8 glasses of water a day (64oz) and build up from there. Drinking a lot of water has endless benefits; it reduces bloat, curbs appetite, improves your complexion – I could go on forever.

For me, having a nice large drinking cup that you can take with you anywhere is key to sticking with this goal. I got this one on Amazon when I was pregnant, and I plan to bring it back out and get serious about staying hydrated again.

Meal Plan

I love to cook… but I hate grocery shopping. Like, a LOT.

I’ve found that when I make a conscious effort to meal plan, it is a lot easier to come up with a decent grocery list that allows me to only need to go to the store once a week. When I fall off the wagon, I end up in a pattern of never knowing what to make, rarely having all of the needed ingredients, and therefore either; a) making multiple trips to the grocery store, or b) getting more take-out than necessary.

There are a ton of different methods of meal planning and I encourage you to search the internet for ideas to determine what would work best for you. What personally works for me is to take some time one night per week to plan meals for the next 7 days. I go on Pinterest, search for recipes, and save them all into a separate board for meal planning. After I’ve picked 7 recipes, I go back again and write down all the ingredients needed for these meals and this ends up being the majority of my grocery list. By doing this, I ensure that when I go to the grocery store with my list, I’ll be picking up everything I need, therefore eliminating multiple trips throughout the week.

Disconnect

Last but not least, this year I’d really like to be more present and regularly disconnect from social media and my phone. Although I don’t consider myself addicted to social media, I do admit that I’m on it quite a bit.

When I became a stay at home mom, I didn’t realize how lonely it can be to not talk to another adult all day. As a result, I find myself on Instagram often, and while I have found some amazing fellow moms through this app, I also find myself on my phone more often than I’d like to be and I really don’t like that.

I love technology, but I feel it sucks us in way too much sometimes, and I don’t want my daughter to grow up addicted to technology either. I realize I have to lead by example in order to be successful with this.

So, my goal is to simply cut down a bit. I’m not on my phone constantly so this shouldn’t be that hard, but I just want to be more mindful of when and how often I use my phone, and putting it away during meals or while doing something else (for example, checking my phone while also watching TV).

That is pretty much it! My simple self improvement goals for 2018.

Do you make a new year’s resolution? If so, what is it? If not, why? Let me know in the comments below! 🙂

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