This post originally appeared on blog.miavia.in.

For me it’s always hard to plan ahead, which is why New Year’s Eve is quite a difficult time. First off you have to answer many questions about where you plan to spend the night and once you finally managed to find out, you have to make sure to have a glass of sparkling wine in your hand at exactly 12 pm.

Also, I’m not the biggest fan of the hype around New Year’s resolutions. New Year’s resolutions seem so great and exciting because with the new year ahead we will all “for sure” more easily change a certain habit of ours. And at the end of the year it’s easy to make plans to exercise more, smoke less and also eat healthy breakfast after doing some yoga in the morning before walking to work instead of taking the bus. Following through on really important goals mostly takes more than fireworks and a terrible headache to be sure you’ll never (!) drink again, but zeroing in on the really important plans might also take longer than drinking half a bottle of champagne.

Still, I’d like to propose a New Year’s resolution for us all today:

In our busy and hectic life we are mostly too hung up on our daily rhythm and commitments and focus too less on remembering and exploring.

We can break that down in different parts of life, and I make sure to give examples about how this resolution last year positively affected my life, because at the end of next year nobody wants to say “Oh, I really should have traveled more this year when I had the chance!”

Remember to Explore… New Countries

It is always amazing to return to countries you know you like, you probably even partly speak the language or where you already know somebody. Still, visiting a completely new country on your own, debunks all the stereotypes you had in your head — you learn more about the culture by making sure you at least try and learn some words in the foreign language and meet new people with different histories and new viewpoints of the world.

I have lived abroad in countries I didn’t know one person before moving there, but this year in summer I traveled for the first time completely on my own.

It was only for the short period of 2 weeks, and it was only the US & Canada, but what I learned even through this experience is that being on your own and on the road opens your eyes to more details around you. You are more likely to meet new people in all possible situations and you are more likely to just remember to stop and enjoy the moment or remember to explore a path which seemed not that obvious at first. You go hiking after a night out, because you really want to do it, you are fine with getting lost, because the only responsibility is to make up a fun story out of how you held the map upside down and you are able to just sit and listen to the daily life of a place you’re visiting.

Remember to Explore… Your own limits

People do not grow by staying inside their comfort zones and by trying to achieve goals which seem easily achievable people are not able to make the jump to a better self.

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they are not big enough.”

I took this quote by heart when I decided to register for a 30km mountain race in South Tyrol, Italy, giving myself a little less than 3 months to train without having run more than 10km ever before in my life. It was vigorous training, adjusting my sleeping habits to make room for running during my day, the a bit freakish measuring of my heart-rate during training sessions, exhausting interval runs with my dad and pure panic of having to walk parts of the way on racing day and the important goal of finally being able to run long distances to finish the race in June in a time of 3:16h, smiling and jumping when crossing the finish line.

To go back and remember to explore your own limits means to set yourself goals that bring you further and shift your limits to new dimensions. Where can you push your limits and break out of your comfort zone?

Always wanted to volunteer abroad? Still haven’t signed up to join that language café to improve your Spanish skills? What scares and excites you that much so it could have an immensely positive impact on your life? Identify goals which are so important that even running at 6 am in the snow before going to work seems like a sacrifice that will give back so much more energy that it costs you.

Remember to Explore… Places around you

There is something else we tend to forget exploring. The cities we live in, the towns or regions we grew up in and even our own neighborhoods. This autumn I spent some time at my hometown after returning from 3 months abroad and I made it a point to go back to places I used to visit years ago but never really paid attention to. When walking with my dog along a street, I spotted a fence, partly overgrown by moss and a little off the street and I suddenly remembered that I had never even bothered to find out what was behind. I would be the person to peak around every corner when traveling abroad, but in my hometown I just ignored opportunities to find beautiful places. So, look what I found on the other side of the fence. ☺

On that note: I love Daily Secret with what they are doing to make sure people in major cities around the world stop and remember in what a beautiful place they are living.