It’s no secret - I am not a fan of the New Year’s resolution. I think there’s a lot of pressure and hype to make broad, sweeping changes to our lives starting January 1 . To make matters worse, it’s become a cultural joke that we won’t maintain these changes. Any regular gym-goer knows that the gym is packed the first couple months of a new year, and then tapers off sharply when we get distracted or demotivated en masse.

I decided long ago that resolutions are not for me. Resolutions, no. Resets, yes. So what’s the difference?

RESETS
A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a lifestyle and productivity vlogger in Australia with the screenname Muchelleb. Her content, specifically her life admin and reset topics, changed my life. I’ll first link you to her playlist of resets, and then briefly explain how I’ve adopted this style of life planning.

I do weekly, monthly, and, the topic at hand, yearly resets. These are not meant to be broad, lofty changes that I’m destined to abandon by spring. These are quite the opposite. These are periodic checkpoints. Instead of being an opportunity for me to look back at all the days I didn’t stick to resolutions and feel bummed about it, they are chances for me to regroup, refresh, and maintain the habits and behaviors that keep me on. Each reset has its own checklist of tasks, but for now, we’ll focus on the yearly reset.

My yearly reset includes the following things:
1. Fresh pages: New planners (paper and digital), and the wall calendar I share with my partner. I prefill all major dates, birthdays, anniversaries, etc, using the previous calendar as a guide.

I love buying planners and calendars each year. I love picking calendars featuring an artist or genre of art.. 2020 was an Edward Gorey calendar. 2021 will highlight the Harlem Renaissance. Past years have also included Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe, and The Museum of Really Bad Art.

2. Count My Coin: Review 401K accounts, credit cards, and submit any receipts from my Health Spending account for reimbursement. My new addition to this category is to get my annual free credit reports from the reporting agencies.

I keep track of all my bills in a spreadsheet, so this is a good time to double-check that I’ve got every bill accounted for and unsubscribe from any apps or services I’m not using.

3. Goal reviews (for life, work, and NU): These lists are short, private, and include things that may seem lofty compared to my reset lists. This is where I dream about what I want to achieve and try to identify actionable steps to get me there.

I’ve heard many experts say that we are more like to work towards a goal if we write it down and give it tangibility. As nurse Monique Doughty has said in a video with NP Fatima Francesa “you gotta get hella specific” about what you want.

I keep big goals private because I also try to live by the motto of “don’t tell them, show them”. I’m an impulsive, creative type and I’ve learned that broadcasting every idea I have is not a good idea. When I do find a goal worth keeping, I maintain accountability to myself by focusing on the end reward and taking just one step at a time to get there.

If you’d like to see any of my previous goal benchmarks, check out the links at the bottom of this page.

4. A full digital reset which I am in the middle of as I type this post. It’s a whole list of tasks, well outlined in muchelleb’s recent annual digital reset video. I don’t do everything on her list, but I do a lot of it. I clear out my multiple cloud storage accounts, purge and tidy my iMac, eliminate old contact info that I no longer need, and other tedious tasks that actually make me more productive once they’re done. It’s a lot to go through so I’m doing this over the course of a couple of weeks.

So, that’s my mindset for resolutions versus resets. Now that we’ve established that, I want to reveal my Habits to Keep for 2021. These are not resolutions, but rather behaviors and habits that I started during the pandemic which I’d like to maintain in 2021. I plan to do so with weekly and monthly resets to evaluate how I’m sticking to things and what I can do to make it easier.

The things on the list are realistic for me and are going to be part of my weekly resets to help me maintain these behaviors.

Drumroll, please….

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Things I’m keeping in 2021

Curbside everything and contact-free delivery: as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, my partner and I have only gotten groceries by way of curbside pick-up for the last 10 months. Aside from a few out-of-stock items and a few less-than-stellar pieces of produce, I’ve been completely satisfied with my local grocer’s online ordering and curbside pickup. It’s also caused us to cut down on all the impulse and craving-driven items that seem good at the moment, but otherwise are unnecessary (i.e. the entire chip aisle).

I’m blessed to have a car with a good heater and the ability to watch YouTube videos while I wait. If you don’t have a car, or you can’t access drive-up services, do what you need to do to get by. Wear a mask of course. Those of us who can stay out of stores should - this makes it less congested for those who maybe don’t have the choice to not go into a grocery store.
Meal planning and more conscious shopping: Since we can’t just run into the store to pick up an item or two for that day, we’ve needed to be more intentional about meal planning and when we order. This was a huge change for us since we used to only shop for fresh items for meals every few days. Due to minimum order requirements and scheduling, we now shop every 2-3 weeks, or when we’re desperate for a small group of items.

The Mister loves to cook, and I try my damnedest. We made this whole process easier with a dry erase calendar in the kitchen. First, we decide what meals we want to make (we try to do more bulk cooking for leftovers or freezing), we schedule them out, and then make a plan for when things have to come out of the freezer, what we should eat before it goes bad, etc. We keep a running grocery list hanging next to the calendar and add things when they are out or running low. This was tedious and annoying at first, but now we’ve got a routine down. It’s one of the best lifestyle changes we made in 2020.

This is the meal planning command center. I made a calendar with a dry erase board and a permanent marker. To the right, we have our grocery list and a list of meals we like to make for inspo.

3. Meditation, mindfulness, and affirmations. We all know that 2020 was a whirlwind of seemingly unbelievable and tragic events - from public lynchings, protests, murder hornets, kids in cages, wildfires, a pandemic, and a completely out-of-control circus government, we’ve seen awful things we never expected. It’s no wonder many of us are struggling with stress, anxiety, uncertainty, and perhaps dread about the next things to come.

My newbie-nurse-anxiety subsided a year or two ago. I was thrilled to step into my power as a nurse and feel confident in my actions. Throw in constant PPE, dying patients, fear, short staffing, mandatory reassignments, and higher acuity and you’ve got a perfect storm for feeling terrible all the time. So what do we do?

I don’t know what we do as a society, but I know that as an individual, I’ve had to step up my self-care in new ways. Mainly I’ve been seeking and incorporating guided meditations, listening to affirmation albums and recordings, and doing specific anxiety-relieving techniques like the ones I learned from Therapy In a Nutshell. I also try to do more things mindfully - i.e. undistracted - like eating, stretching, listening to others, and other things I usually rush through while multitasking, usually with my phone in hand.

If I miss a few days, I don’t beat myself up over it. I just start again. I don’t track my completion of these things since that defeats the original purpose of being stress-relieving. I try to listen to affirmations as I get ready for work, and I do the vagus nerve stimulating techniques when I start to feel panicked on shift. I try to remind myself that I feel better when I do these things consistently and gently urge myself to get back on track.

I’m really digging guided meditations on youtube. Some are super cheesy, but if you’re committed to the search, you can find something that makes you feel relaxed and happier. https://youtu.be/3UMC8fdoyt4

4. Boldness to seek appropriate medical care: I’m a nurse. I am in a hospital 3 days a week. I encourage my patients to keep follow-up appointments. I also rarely see a dentist, only see my MD when I need migraine med refills, and I intermittently seek counseling (usually in crisis). This must stop. Generally, being examined, poked, and questioned is not fun, but as I get older, I need to suck it up and ensure my ongoing health.

So 2021 I am being courageous and proactive enough to make the appointments I need in advance (as opposed to when I have a problem and need to be seen “now”), and keep them despite fear and the desire to not spend more time in medical settings than I already do for my job.

2021 is the year I let my dentist take these wisdom teeth, the year I have my annual preventative check-ups, and seek regular counseling (which helps me thrive when I use it). Just typing about this makes me tap my foot with nervous energy. But I can do hard things (I keep telling myself).

5. Keep awareness of where my money is going. I was raised with terrible money habits. My very loving parents were not financial role models, so I have a lifetime of bad habits and ideas to break. My historical reaction to money and budgeting has been “if I don’t think about it, I can’t be stressed about it”. This, my friends, is not how you control money. It is how money controls you. Avoidance only made my troubles and anxiety worse instead of better.

Enter 2020. This year forced me to think about my financial security in the face of millions of people losing jobs, homes, and their dreams to a pandemic economy. I’m blessed with the job security of a nurse (that’s both good and bad! ha!). Joking aside, the Mister and I had to have some hard talks about my money habits (bae is great with savings and budgeting) and what that means for our future together. It was a hard, but necessary talk and some changes needed to back up what I was saying.

So the tail end of 2020 began my new money habits: serious credit card paydown, conscious spending (the hardest at Christmas time), and daily account balancing. Even just looking at how much I was spending on habits that are silly (oh my god did I thrift shop a lot) has helped. These new habits started me out feeling shameful about old ones. After some time, money consciousness has become empowering - because I don’t have to guess how much money I have, I don’t cringe waiting for that card to be approved, and I don’t have to borrow money because I ran out. In 2021, I control my money. It does not control me.

Check out the episodes with Travis Hornsby, CFA for some great financial advice regarding student loan repayment.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So there you have it. These are the things I’ll be carrying from 2020 into 2021. The rest of this past year is trash and I don’t need it. As I’ve said with other suggestions I’ve made, not all of these things will work for all people. Just take away what you think fits in your life and try it out for a month.

* I do strongly encourage everyone to utilize drive-up/curbside services as much as possible to limit the spread of COVID. The rest is completely elective.

I believe that goals are achievable with passion and a plan. For me, the focus is on breaking things down into bite-sized steps and knocking ‘em out one at a time. I know many of us in the nursing realm are tired as we approach 2021, but also kick-ass and able to innovate solutions.

Now I’m going to directly contradict myself for good reason:

2020 has been hard - for too many Americans it’s been a nightmare that isn’t over yet. I recognize that what many of you really need is a break. As Macy Hall said in her recent interview on the podcast, sometimes it’s a matter of lowering your expectations.

I want to reassure you, that if you read this post and feel totally overwhelmed, then this post isn’t meant for you. What is meant for you is rest and dumping commitment to anyone or anything outside yourself, your family, and your well-being. If all you did today was drink some water and lay on the couch while your kids played on the iPad, then that’s fucking beautiful.

I do encourage everyone to develop at least one goal, even if it’s small. Time is going to pass anyway, so you might as well spend time working toward something you want or need (from a daily nap to a new business).

While the shitshow that is 2020 is trying to linger (pandemic and politics) I hope that 2021 has good things in store for all of us.

Please, even if you’ve been vaccinated, don’t let up on pandemic precautions. Wear your mask when you’re around anyone you don’t live with (even if they are very close friends and family). Stay home as much as possible. Keep your hands clean and off of your face. Then encourage those around you to do the same.

Peace and love to all the Nursing Uncensored universe!

XO,
Adrianne

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