How to make New Year resolutions stick? With your Environment.

Your Artist friend here, Jennifer Marie Keller, Lets make our space a bit more beautiful.

The number one best way to keep your New Year resolution is to make sure your environment supports it.

For example, there is this building in Seattle, The bullitt center, that has a staircase nicknamed The Irresistible Staircase. In an effort to encourage people to use the stairs instead of an elevator they made the stairs, well, irresistible. With wooden steps surrounded by all glass windows to give a panorama of the city while you ascend or descend.

I am taking that same idea to help me stick to my new years resolutions by making my environment work of me.

My Resolution or rather mantra for the New Year is I am Powerful. I want my mind and body feeling powerful so I am making spaces in my home to support working out, reading, and journaling.

My living room here is a spot that I love going to when the kids go down for bed and I get to spend some time for myself. Or when my kids who are toddles are having a rare time of quiet independent play and I can relax here.

I want this space to be really easy for me to read or journal in. I already like this space a lot but I want to try and make it as irritable as possible to want to read and write.

I moved my easel out of the room so I could more so divide my studio from my living room. So now this room is dedicated to rest, reading, and writing. But most importantly I want to have art in this room. I want calm and peaceful art for when I am in that mood but I also want inspiring and curious art for when I’m wanting to stretch and grow my mind. I like that we have two couches that face two different walls. So I can hang the serene paintings here. and the more curious ones here.

With resolution and changing habits, I use to have the mindset of just putting my head down and get to work and just grind and get the work done no matter what and no matter how I was feeling. but that is not sustainable. Definitely not sustainable for a year.

Now I try and make new habits irresistible and I have much better success. Because when things feel easy and not like a hassle I’m much more likely to do them.

Or if you are wanting to avoid something then make it a hassle. This is what I did when I wanted to stop watching so much TV. I realized I would sit down on the couch whenever I wanted to relax, be distracted, or was bored. I always kept our TV remote on the couch so I would see it there and then turn it on and start watching TV. So then I decided that whenever I turned off the TV I would but the remote in the cabinet under the TV. So the next time I would sit on the couch I didn’t have immediate access to it. Now it wasn’t too inconvenient to get the remote but just enough that I had to consciously decide if I actually wanted to watch TV and if I did I would have to walk about 15 to get it. It sounds silly but just that little change and that little bit of inconvenience stopped my over watching TV.

Changing up my living room a bit is my new idea to change my environment just enough to make me want to read and write more. I am going to test this out for a bit. If it works great! but if it doesn’t I’ll pivot make some new changes to test out until I find what works for me right now. But I also know that works for me right now may not still work in 6 months So I want to be mindful and keep pivoting and updating as I change.

Bonus tip, I think flexible structure without rigidity is another great way to keep your New Years Resolutions.

What can you do in your environment to make your new years resolution irresistible to stick to?

your artist friend,

Jennifer Marie Keller