Right, that’s it…New Year, new me! That’s what we’re all thinking this week; the new year sets us all up to believe we can start with a blank canvas and reinvent ourselves and our habits for a brighter, better year ahead.

Legend has it that this tradition of making new year’s resolutions goes back around 4,000 years to the Babylonians, who made promises to their gods in the hope of a favourable year. I am truly a glass-half-full person, but I have also come to realise that making proper changes has to come from a deeper place than the calendar merely rolling from one year into the next. Do not despair, there are ways to approach the resolutions we make that give us a higher chance of success and I thought I’d share a couple of things with you that have really worked for me in the past.

Ensuring that any change we want to make is a long term one and not a flash-in-the-pan means making it a part of a new routine. For me, routine goes hand-in-hand with organisation (I’ve always been a list maker) and about six years ago I came across a principle known as bullet-journaling. How do you describe a bullet journal? It’s really just a next-level diary for not only writing but also drawing, which appeals to my creative side. Instead of blank, lined pages, a bullet journal contains sections to log daily to-dos, keep a monthly or weekly calendar, jot down notes, and record both short and long-term goals. Really, it’s a blank notebook and can be anything you want it to be. You don’t have to be artistic to get on with the system. Mine looks like a series of daily to-do lists that I cross off as I get through them. It has helped me immensely in striving to organise my time and all the family commitments we have and it helps with my mental health as I can see what I’ve achieved each day. Everything goes on there from ‘appointments’ to ‘dog walk’ to ‘do the big shop’. If you want to change your habits around your daily routine, you can use your journal to write down what you plan to do, that way you’re much more likely to do it. I’ve become inseparable from my bullet journal. Give it a Google if it sounds like something you’d use.

My second tip around resolutions harks back to my teaching days. We were taught to set targets for pupils using the SMART acronym: they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. It sounds very much like jargon but it boils down to quite sensible principles. For instance, I want to get fitter this year but instead of making that vague statement my resolution, it will look like this: to join Parkrun and complete it every week with the aim of improving my time over 5k by Easter. It’s specific, I can measure my progress, it’s definitely achievable, relevant to getting fitter and time-based. I’ll know by Easter if I’ve improved my time and if so will set myself a new target or a time to aim for.

Of course, setting resolutions isn’t for everyone, we all do what we need to do to get through the day. But whichever type of person you are, I wish you all the best for this next twelve months, I think it has lots of potential so let’s greet it with open arms and see what January brings. And if you see me sweating red-faced along the Esplanade doing Parkrun, don’t forget to wave!