By: Maria Allen Cellan

New Year is the best time for us to start making meaningful changes in our lives. This new beginning gives us the hope to persevere with our dreams, and to create new goals. For anyone who’s serious about New Year resolutions, making them is a brave step. First of all, it requires an honest assessment of what’s working and not working in our lives. We need to consider what we want for ourselves, and what we want to achieve in the coming year.

For domestic workers, the New Year is a chance to find new opportunities, and to reach new goals, like saving money and eating healthy. In this article, I’m going to share with you my personal New Year resolutions – and most importantly, how I plan to keep them for the rest of the year.

1) Read more

I believe that reading is another way of gaining wisdom and knowledge. The more I read the more I will learn about things. Reading can also help improve my communication skills.

2) Keep myself fit

That means I will exercise twice a day, 6 days a week, for at least 10 to 15 minutes. I will also try to eat healthy foods, and avoid eating junk food and sodas. I believe that in my kind of job it’s good to take care of myself as much as I can. Being sick and away from family is one of the struggles of domestic workers. The fact is that we still have to work even when we are sick, so staying as healthy as possible is very important.

3) Write more

Writing is another way of expressing myself. If I have good writing skills it will allow me to communicate to other people with clarity.

4) Less shopping and more saving

Although I save money every month, I still need to try to save more. Nobody wants to work away from their family for the rest of their lives.

5) Look for other opportunities

Let’s be honest here: nobody wants to work as a domestic worker forever. We all have dreams and we all know that this kind of work is only temporary until we have enough money saved to start a business or until we find a new career.

But how am I going to keep my resolutions? Here are some of my tips to stay on track.

Be realistic.

Before I wrote down my New Year resolutions I had to be realistic about what I could achieve. For example, one of my resolutions is to avoid eating junk food. One way of being realistic is that instead of saying that I will not eat junk food anymore, I can just say that I will avoid eating junk food. That way, I’m not putting too much pressure on myself.

Share my resolutions with my friends

Friends can help us succeed in keeping our resolutions. For instance, I can get one of my friends to be my workout buddy every weekend, and through this I can lose weight and keep myself fit. Friends can also remind me of the benefits I will receive if I achieve my goals (good health, satisfaction etc).

Don’t make a long list of resolutions

Chances of success are greater if I only channel my energy into changing just a few aspects of my behavior, like less shopping and more saving. Instead of going for shopping I can go to church and attend religious group activities.

Create a plan and write it down

It’s important to create a plan so you can stick to your resolutions. For example,

I’m planning to start each day with a 10-15 minute exercise and a healthy breakfast. I’m also going to start a journal so I can track my progress. Don’t forget to give yourself a small reward whenever you achieve a goal: it will keep you motivated.

It’s challenging to stick to New Year resolutions, but remember that if you fail, you can always start again. Nobody is perfect; missteps when reaching goals are completely normal. What matters most is that we have a good vision for our lives. Our vision will help us reach our goals, stay disciplined and focused. This New Year, we should keep trying to find opportunities to develop ourselves, so that we never feel devalued as domestic workers. Let’s see 2016 as the start of a new, exciting journey.