Home » Happy Snowman

The Ten Top New Years Resolutions for 2012 - Trying to Improve

by susannaduffy

Last updated: 05/27/2012
415 Comments
- What's the Most Impo…
- What are your New Ye…

526 Like

Like 526

Pin It

Most of us share the Top Ten New Years Resolutions

The same Top Ten New Year resolutions crop up every year. Why? It's obvious. Because they're just so hard to keep!

I have trouble keeping my resolutions, but this time I'm determined to finally do better.

Success is not an accident, it begins with a well-conceived plan. You can and will achieve more in the next year than you have in the past ten with a disciplined plan of action. By investing your efforts into a New Years Resolution, you give yourself a launch pad for starting your new year and your new life.

My list includes many of the items listed below, but this Lens is not about my New Years Resolutions, but the Top Ten Resolutions.

The Top Ten Resolutions List

1. Stop Smoking
2. Get into a Habit of being Fit
3. Lose Weight - the Battle of the Bulge
4. Enjoy Life More.
5. Quit Drinking
6. Organise Yourself - this is one of the keys to reaching your goals
7. Learn Something New
8. Get out of Debt
9. Spend More Time With Family
10. Help People.
Make those Resolutions stick! Set your Goals

So, that's the Top Ten New Years Resolutions. Write them down and see how successful you are at keeping them. I hope that you have more success than I've had in my resolutions over the years. Happy New Year!

1. Stop Smoking

(You may gain 25 lbs)

It's so easy to drop one vice and pick up another - overeating. When you quit smoking the food tastes so much better! Incredibly delicious! Your taste buds came alive after quitting. And it's so easy to substitute the cigarette in your mouth for a chocolate bar. Carry chewing gum. Have sticks of celery close to hand. Drink lots and lots of clean fresh rejuvenating water - pure water - your body craves it.

This will be my third quit campaign. I've done it twice and held on - once for almost two years - but I fell by the wayside. Now I realise that my response to stress is to reach for a cigarette and, let's face it, who doesn't have a stressful life these days? So this time I'm taking an active stand about stress. When it hits me, I will run! Or at least jog. Two or three times around the block. The craving for nicotine should be controlled and, who knows, my stress may very well have disappeared too.

Many people find the will to quit when they read a book about just what a terrible habit smoking is. How it makes you smell, how it controls your life, how often you do things just so you can have a cigarette, apart from the health risk that smoking brings.

What spurs me to succeed this time is the cost of the cigarettes!

Dying to Quit

Learn the connection between mood and tobacco use. Nicotine, a mild euphoriant, provides "quick relief" to anxiety! With some 16 million smokers trying to quit every year, just 1.2 million succeed. Be one of those who succeed!

Dying to Quit: Why We Smoke and How We Stop

by: Janet Brigham, A Joseph Henry Press Book

Amazon Price: $25.95 (as of 06/03/2012)

An engaging and well documented book which helps you understand why quitting smoking is so difficult-- and why you really must do it.

It's been called the "Silent Spring" for smokers.

2. Get into a Habit of being Fit

Getting Fit will take care of losing weight.

This always sounds easier than it really is! I am not going to tell you the number of times that I've started some exercise programme and gradually cut back (with one excuse or another) until it was non-existent. The best exercise I've found is walking.

If you saw a bottle of pills on the supermarket shelf that promised to strengthen your heart, manage your weight and boost your spirits, you would surely dismiss it as snake oil. But walking does this! Walking is simple, natural, and doesn't cost a cent. If you haven't been active for a while, it's a gentle low-impact exercise to ease you into a higher level of fitness and health.

A popular way to lose weight and feel good is with Wii 5-In-1 Fitness Bundle

N.B. Always consult your health care professional before you start on any exercise program.

How to Stay Fit

Staying Fit in our Busy World is Hard

Staying fit in our busy world can be hard. Usually when we're busy, our exercise programme is the first activity that suffers. We put off the exercising so we can cram more things into our day.

But exercising is a top priority item, it makes us more productive, makes us sleep better, makes us feel better all round and so naturally we can accomplish more things.

It helps us maintain a good strong body in our thirties, fight off those cramps and fatigue that come on as we reach our forties and helps to keep at bay the wearing down of our bodies as we move to our fifties. If we stay as fit as we can during our adult years we can avoid a lot of troubles as we get older - staying fit helps to combat old age diseases which can so easily cut into what should be our senior and still productive years. I want a long healthy, active life and to maintain my independence into my nineties. You should too.

3. Lose Weight - the Battle of the Bulge

The main reason to lose weight is for health, not appearance.Nearly 112,000 deaths per year may be attributable to obesity.

The risk of death rises with increasing weight

Even moderate weight excess (10 to 20 pounds for a person of average height) increases the risk of death, particularly among adults ages 30 to 64.

Overweight and obesity are associated with an increased risk for some types of cancer

For every 2-pound increase in weight, the risk of developing arthritis increases by 9 to 13 percent.

The incidence of heart disease is higher in persons who are overweight or obese

It all starts with inspiration. Lose Weight with these. Get one and start on your New Years Resolution.

Help from our Lensmasters

YOU: The Owner's Manual

An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger

Find out how diseases start and how they affect your body-as well as advice on how to prevent and beat the conditions that threaten your quality of life. Complete with exercise tips, nutritional guidelines, simple lifestyle changes, and alternative approaches.

YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger

by: Mehmet C. Oz, Michael F. Roizen

Amazon Price: $7.15 (as of 06/03/2012)

Facts and advice you need to keep your body running long and strong.

An easy, comprehensive, and life-changing how-to plan for fending off the gremlins of aging. Also includes even more great-tasting and calorie-saving recipes as part of the Owner's Manual Diet-an eating plan that is designed with only one goal in mind: to help you live a younger life.

Welcome to your body. Why don't you come on in and take a look around?

4. Enjoy Life More.

Success in what you like to do

Find what you like to do, and do it. If you read the biographies of successful people, this is what they did. An obsession grew into a business, or sports dream was fulfilled, or writing about it resulted in being acknowledged as an expert.

I enjoy reading autobiographies, and biographies, of authors. What inspires them to write, how they fit the act of writing into their day and how they go about getting their work published.

Doing what you like doesn't make it into a weary chore of drudgery, you don't even look at as work. You want to succeed at what you like to do.

How to Enjoy Your Life

You only live life once, live it to the fullest!

The Meaning of Success

One Year in 40 seconds

Video by Eirik Solheim

Eirik Solheim - eirikso.com explains how he made this amazing video of a whole year in less than a minute.

5. Quit Drinking

This one is tough. If you were like me and thought you were an occasional drinker, then please take a few moments to think again.

Recommended Safe Limits of Alcohol

Men should drink no more than 21 units of alcohol per week (and no more than four units in any one day).
Women should drink no more than 14 units of alcohol per week (and no more than three units in any one day)

What is a unit of alcohol?

One unit of alcohol is 10ml (1cl) by volume, or 8g by weight, of pure alcohol. For example: one unit of alcohol is about equal to:

half a pint of ordinary strength beer, lager or cider (3-4% alcohol by volume), or
a small pub measure (25ml) of spirits (40% alcohol by volume), or
a standard pub measure (50ml) of fortified wine such as sherry or port (20% alcohol by volume).

Three pints of beer, three times per week, is at least 18-20 units per week. That's nearly the upper weekly safe limit for a man. However, each drinking session of three pints is at least six units, which is more than the safe limit advised for any one day.

A 750ml bottle of 12% wine contains nine units. If you drink two bottles of 12% wine over a week, that is 18 units. This is above the upper safe limit for a woman.

I was knocking back 3 to 4 bottles of chardonnay a week! I didn't realise that I was way over the limit for a long time.

6. Organise Yourself - this is one of the keys to reaching your goals

I had to work really hard on this one. Remember when it was said that the computer would usher in the Era of the Paperless Office? Ha to that! Almost at once I had five times the amount of paper.

Worse than that, I never seemed to have time to do all of my jobs and the one that was invariably left out was my house. There's nothing worse than having a messy cluttered house, it makes you feel messy and cluttered too.

Zen Habits: My favourite site in keeping life simple and unmessy. All about achieving goals, being organised, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, simplifying, living frugally, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.
Get Organized Now!: Literally thousands of tips and ideas to help you organise your home, organise your office and organise your life! With a free Get Organized Now! Idea-Pak.

7. Learn Something New

With access to the internet, we are no longer restricted by time. All of us can learn at any time of the day or night.

You don't have to step out of your home to learn something new or pursue your interest. Try one of the many online courses and learn at your own pace from the privacy of your own computer.

IT Courses at eLearning: Short and complete 2 to 6 hour online training courses. Javascript training, visual basic, windows server, XHTML and more.
BBC Online Courses: The BBC aims to provide help and support to anyone who is thinking about or returning to the world of adult learning
Small Business Administration: Free online courses in business management, marketing, business plans, ecommerce and more
Free and Affordable Distance Education: Great list of free or cheap distance and online courses.

8. Get out of Debt

Gas prices are through the roof, food prices aren't far behind, jobless rolls are increasing, the mortgage mess is continuing, the housing market is still tanking, and the "R" word is on everyone's lips.

More and more people are turning to credit cards and home equity loans just to stay afloat and some are even using credit cards to pay their mortgages.

Make a determined effort to cut back some of your debt this year - you have to start somewhere.

12 Steps to get out of debt: There isn't one way to get out of debt, and the best program should be tailored to each person's individual situation. But if you feel like you just don't know how to begin, this give syou a sort of guide - one that should be adjusted to fit your financial situation.
Debt Snowball: When you start knocking off the easier debts, you will start to see results and you will start to win in debt reduction.

9. Spend More Time With Family

Make a resolution to spend more time with your family this year.

Schedule family time

At least one day a week sit down to dinner with your family. Eating together, talking together, you can share your successes, and create an atmosphere safe enough to share failures.

Get your family involved in chores such as meal planning. Plan your menus for the month during your next family dinner and you'll have a captive audience.

Tips from our Lensmasters

10. Help People.

Volunteering is an important expression of citizenship and an essential component of democracy. It means the commitment of time and energy for the benefit of society and the community. It's undertaken freely and by choice, without concern for financial gain and can be a fulfilling and gratifying experience.

Make those Resolutions stick! Set your Goals

Make this the year for success

No matter what you've done or failed to accomplish in the past, that was then and this is now!

Let's starting by projecting forward and then thinking back. Project forward to the end of the next twelve months and ask yourself, "If everything happens perfectly, what will it look like?"

Write down your goal.

Write down a list of all the little steps you have to take to reach your goal.

Prioritise those steps.

Do something every day to take yourself along the steps towards your goal.

What's the Most Important New Years Resolution for You?

We all have our New Years Resolution every year. What's your number one resolution for 2011?

Loading poll. Please Wait...

Share this poll
- Stumbleupon
- Facebook
- MySpace
- Twitter
- Digg
- Delicious
- Email

Like this? You could nominate it for a Lens of the Day

Add this to your lens »

This module only appears with actual data when viewed on a live lens. The favorite and lensroll options will appear on a live lens if the viewer is a member of Squidoo and logged in.