New year’s resolutions: a fun challenge
Do you have trouble with maintaining your sustainable new year’s resolutions? Regardless of how motivated you were on New Year’s Day, after the first month of the year is over it becomes harder to keep up with your goals. Besides, every year trying to practice the same good intentions might get boring, such as running and eating healthier again. Luckily, we are going to give you some tips and tricks to help you keep up with sustainable resolutions for a sustainable lifestyle! If these still don’t encourage you to continue your ongoing resolution, we also have a weekly challenge proposal at the end of this blog to help you get inspired to try something new instead.
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Why bother?
To live sustainably means to minimize your use of the Earth’s resources and to reduce the damage of human and environmental interactions. Having a sustainable lifestyle decreases your personal carbon footprint visibly and simultaneously increases your health and social life. It may sound very abstract and complex to participate in this lifestyle, however, the first steps are easier made than you think!
Tips & Tricks
- Remember: You are already doing well!
To start working on the resolutions you wish to complete, it is smart to remind yourself of what you previously have done in a sustainable manner. This will help you to overcome the feeling of ultimate failure when skipping one day of walking, for instance. Additionally, this will tickle your creative spirit with great ideas on how to improve and keep working on them!
- Take small steps
Imagine you want to be able to run 10 kilometers in a few weeks, you would never persist if you try going from zero to 10 kilometers at once, do you? This is also true when taking on too many new sustainable resolutions. It feels impossible to go vegan and plastic free at once, right? Therefore, make your resolutions as small as possible!
52 weeks of sustainability challenge
We have found the perfect solution: the 52 weeks of sustainability challenge! This challenge helps you with improving your daily lifestyle to become more sustainable. Because if you cannot do it for yourself, try to do it for the Earth! This challenge posts a simple lifestyle challenge every Monday. The first week was all about minimizing food waste. Discounts and attractive new products love to be taken with you to your kitchen, however it is more sustainable to first eat what you already have! The challenge is as follows: first eat what you already have in stock before buying some new ones. This way you avoid moldy products that are going to waste. The second one challenges you to go by foot and bike, instead of taking your car, as much as you can. This will dramatically lower your carbon emissions immediately! The challenge of last week focused on taking a cold shower. This will not only save energy and water since you most probably will shower shorter, but it will also boost your mood, energy and immune system. This week challenges you to make a bird paradise. Easy things you can do such as hanging a birdhouse and providing food and water to help biodiversity to prosper.
These bite size challenges makes it easier to keep up motivation to increase your sustainability year round. They give you small changes and always renew your excitement with a new challenge. Ultimately, the challenges that work best for you are the ones you are most likely to keep trying to stick to even after the year is done.
Do you want to know more about the 52-weeks challenge? Take a look at the website (in Dutch). To read in English, open in chrome, left click the page and select the translate option.
Good luck, you can do this!
By Jitske Fijneman