Ringing in a new year

I love the idea of New Year's Day!  A new start, time to make good on all those things you've been promising yourself.  It seems so hopeful to me.  And I'm a girl who loves hope.  So naturally, I see New Year's as a time to re-imagine what the upcoming year could be. 

I have a secret superpower: I am able to make and keep my new year's resolutions. 

Ok, its not really a superpower, its just knowing yourself enough to know how to set some realistic goals.  I don't usually set goals that impossible, no need to make myself feel like a failure.  Instead, I choose a few things that I want to improve about myself, and work on those.

Also, I make my list of resolutions really pretty so that I can hang them up on my bulletin board to remind myself what I'm working on.

This year, the list is kind of short, but still a challenge:

My resolutions are never overwhelming, and always something I think I can achieve.  So, this year I will:

1. Find an active hobby.

I have many hobbies that are stationary hobbies.  I love crafts, and knitting and sewing-- but not much movement happens there.  I need to find an activity that I like, that is active.  I run, but I don't ever enjoy that.  As a result, it is easy for me to go 2 weeks (like I have over the holidays...) not running.  I need something that is sorta social, active, and kinda fun.  And I need to be able to do it in the winter. 

Why an active hobby?  I think of it as a kind of test for myself.  I am starting to really like my body.  and one challenge for me is to take my body and do something active with it where other people will see me.  I run alone, inside, on a treadmill.   I want to love my body as it jiggles and wiggles while I'm moving. 

2.  Do one new thing.

This resolution is vague on purpose.  I don't really know what that new thing will be.  But, I really like to challenge myself, and I haven't done that recently.  I've been wanting to do something that scares me for a while.  No I'm not a masochist, I like trying to conquer some of the fears I have.  And one way I can do that is by facing them.  One year, I walked on the glass floor of the CN Tower, to face my fear of heights.  Its 1, 122 feet off the ground.  It did it.  And I felt awesome after I did it.  So I would like to do something like that again.  Maybe something to do with spiders...

3. Be self- affirming.

Honestly, this one will be the hardest.  I am the queen of self- depreciation.  I make jokes at my expense all the time.  And I never stop to think what it does to my state of mind.  Isn't that awful?  I seem to worry about everyone else's feelings but my own.  And then, when people don't consider my feelings, instead of being about to move past it, I fall apart.  I figure, that if I started to be nicer to myself, maybe just maybe, I can handle when other people are not as nice to me as they could be.

This is the resolution that will need the strictest game plan.   How will I know that I am being self-affirming?  Should I do a checklist?  A routine?  I may keep a journal, and write one thing I like about myself everyday.  I'm not sure how I will set it up yet. 

Do you have any practice that you use to protect your feelings of self appreciation?  I would love to hear about them...