Little Tweaks Make the Difference

New Year’s Eve is just around the corner. That means New Year’s Resolutions. Well, for some it does anyway. For others, they scoff at making them. Sometimes that group includes me as well. I get it. If you make these huge proclamations, you basically set yourself up for failure. It is difficult to make some grand, wide-sweeping goal for an entire year, especially when you don’t know what the next 365 days may hold.

For me, I find that I need to make smaller resolutions, or goals, if that sounds better. These mini goals may be for the for the first half of the year, a month, a week, or frankly, just getting me through a day is hard enough of a plan. I have a number of goals. They are always getting tweaked too. To be honest, sometimes a tweak is required because my original goal was too big or not working like I hoped. Other times, a have to tweak it because it just makes more sense. My mini resolutions range from eating better to writing more to getting my room with boxes organized. Each of those goals comes with a list of steps of its own though. I think that is daunting part that loses many people, or at least me.

If I try to just work on the big goal, it is overwhelming. For example, the goal of eating better…that is pretty wide-sweeping and hard. So, I need to make it manageable and on a daily, doable basis. Take my vitamins each day. Drink six glasses of water. Log my food into the myfitnesspal app on my phone, which seems to be the hardest mini goal ever! I believe that if I can just succeed at the little steps, it will help me achieve the main goal of being healthy. And, if I combine it with my other goal of walking during my break each day and exercising at least four times a week, I could lose a few pounds. No crazy diet resolution needed.

I also believe it is those little tweaks that make all the difference. They give you substance and that extra wow in life. Without the little tweaks, I think things are just normal, average and nothing changes. Take this photo for example. I took this photo last June with my iPhone. The pretty flower made a nice, clean and appealing photo.

After some little editing tweaks though, I think the photo has more of a wow-factor. It is more dreamy and magical, and for me, it has a touch more pizazz.

This little example speaks to my goals in life, my mini resolutions. I want to do everything I can to add little tweaks to my life and daily activities. Can I eat better and exercise regularly to lose those nagging 10 pounds without trying some ridiculous diet? Can I improve my writing by blogging regularly? Can I advance my photography skills by learning from other photographers? Could I finally get rid of the boxes in my dinning room if I dedicated one 15-minute session to the room every week? I would have to bet that if I actually made some of these little tweaks, these goals are possible. Or at the very least, I would be closer to my goals than if I did absolutely nothing. In fact,  I believe Albert Einstein explained it very poetically.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So, bring on the new year and all of the little resolutions or goals or plans or whatever word you want to give them. Because let’s face it. We may not all make resolutions, but we all have some ideas of what we want to do in 2015. And if you don’t have little tweaks and steps along the way, nothing will likely change.