Do You Have To Wait Until the New Year To Start A New Year's Resolution?

Two weeks from now it'll be the year 2016, and a lot of people will be making New Year's resolutions. There seems to be two reasons why people wait until a new year before making a resolution. For starters, once the holidays are over there's no delays standing in our way like shopping, wrapping presents, and attending parties and services. Second, a lot of people seem to feel different once a new year has started -- like they have a clean slate giving them extra oomph to stick to their resolution. In reality, January 1 is no different than any other day on the calendar; it just feels that way because a digit has changed. 

If there is a resolution you have in mind for 2016, why not start it now? Or maybe there's a change you can start making now that doesn't require a lot of earth-shattering effort. 

I started one of mine the other day. It is to get washed up and dressed right away in the morning. Wait, doesn't everyone do that? Well, since being unemployed I had fallen into a really bad rut this year of not getting groomed and dressed until 10 AM most mornings, and sometimes later than that during the summer. I open my laptop after breakfast and am perfectly content to sit on my bed in my PJs and robe and do freelance work and check email for the next two hours. It had become a really bad habit. I admit it -- I had turned into a lazy ass. By the time it had finally occurred to me to get up and get ready (as in realizing lunch wasn't that far away), I felt like my energy for the day had already taken a dive. 

Not only that, but I realized that this habit wasn't helping me get into the "I'm working in a new job" mode/vibration. If I'm going to be acting as if the new job is already here, I need to be acting as if I have a new job now, and that means getting ready on time. I've also been going to bed earlier to avoid falling back to asleep after the alarm goes off and by next month, want to be waking up at the time I was when I was working, which was 6:30 AM (right now I get up at 7 AM, so you can cut me some slack.)

It sounds like a trivial resolution, but an important one to contribute to my mindset towards new employment (one of my other resolutions is, obviously, to get a great new job!) I also want to get more passionate about life again. Although I've been happy lately, my mojo is still kind of lacking -- part of it is due to being at home so much during the week. For starters I plan on getting more events posted with my meetup group as well as participating in ones I've belonged to for a while, but haven't done much with. 

If there's a new year's resolution you could begin now, why not get a jump on everyone else and start it now? You also may find you're less inclined to drop it once we're a week or two into 2016.