Are you prepared for the hashtags, new year new me posts that are about to flood you we chat, facebook and instagram?


Traditionally our choices and persuasion of change has failed year after year and yet we continue to make these resolutions in the hopes that this new year will be different. Unfortunately, the only thing that's really different IS the year.


On this note we have compiled a list WORTH READING, worth trying, and achievable. No more giving up smoking and diets while living in China, just alter new things. Or completely change your life.


1. Don't send a text to someone sitting in the next room…or the same room.

$t^&*!) Internet!!! Is it really that hard to communicate with people these days. Leave your phone at home and enjoy the companionship of others in THE SAME ROOM.

2. Try taking a selfie that looks like a picture of an actual person

Do it right or don't do at all. Instagram models of 2016, please no more filters. How about showing us your great new hairstyle, beautiful eyes by taking a semi-normal picture. The one where the your lips aren't completely pursed. Theres no real sunlight for the next couple months anyways.

3. Try coming up with a new creative excuse for playing hooky.

"I'm getting sick" and "my dog can't be alone" are getting a little old. Say something like "I was on my way to work/class when….I seriously saw a superman and…" Be a little more dramatic next time. Who knows it could come off as believable. Who's your boss to question whether superheroes exist or not.

4. Don't save your fortune cookie message like it's going to guide you

Read our Monday Horoscopes instead.

5. Don't drunk dial, text, or Snapchat

Just once, during a crazy night out in 2016, try not to drunk-anything-phone-related to anyone. You know that you're going to regret it when you eventually come out of your "tipsy stage," or however you call it.

6. Be accepting.

We live in a day when gay marriage is legal, marijuana legalization is happening, and the NSA is invading our privacy. Alright, so don't be accepting soooo understand people are gay and people smoke pot. If you're not and you don't, great. If you are and you do, great. Don't get in the way of someone else's lifestyle. Accept the things you cannot change.

7. Don't stay home from work so you can watch the "Scandal" (whichever show) marathon

We've all been tempted. Some of us have done it. I'm watching it right now. Resist. Money > Me. The US government is not that important, or is that what it's even about.

8. Get your photo taken in five interesting places

If you've got the travel bug and want to see a bit more of the world, why not make it a New Year's resolution to visit five interesting places you've always wanted to see? Even better, make a visual record of the year by making sure you get a photo of yourself taken in each place.

It's enough, we’ve all seen The Pearl Tower. Good photo opportunities include Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, the Great Wall of China, and 50 Moganshan Road; but use your imagination to think of your own – the world is yours.

9. Try a new food each week

It's Shanghai after all. Why not enjoy our great dining deals. Rather than cutting out foods from your diet as with so many New Year's resolutions, opt to add more foods in to your diet next year instead (bonus points if they're green!). By making a resolution to try a new food each week.


10. Give up your lies

All lies. Big and small. To yourself and to others. You're not 22. You're 27. It's not you, it's me. I'm out with my friends tonight. I love you. The dog did it.

11. Gain a new appreciation of life

It's easy to take life for granted as the rich get richer. You go on about your life, in a daze for the rat race, not realizing how good you have it just to be alive. Do something to remind yourself how slippery life is.

Close your eyes, cross a Shanghai street during rush hour, and just hear all the life honking and whizzing past you, tempting that they might take yours along with them. Or find a stray cat and feed it to an ATM; feel its adorable life slip through your white-knuckled hands like so many grains of sand. Start the new year with the right perspective.

12. Become ambidextrous

Think about it. By only having one dominant hand, you’re handicapping yourself at 50% productivity. Start training your non-dominant hand, and by the end of the new year you’ll find that you’ve doubled the fiscal year end bottom line profit net gain gross yield reports.

13. Embrace your Fears

One of the biggest ways we can grow as people is by conquering our fears, whether it's spiders, gnawing on a chalkboard, or romantic commitment. The best way to get over them is to tackle them head on, either bit by bit, or in one big, grinding bite.

Eat one spider a day until they taste good, or dive into a pool of spiders. Take nibbles out of chalkboard, or try and chomp off a whole corner. Sign away your soul to some soul sucking parasite. You can do it.

14. Burn all your money

Make money, spend it, save it, make more, spend more, save some, need more, spend more, save some—why do you let it run you in so many circles, like a headless chicken? Free yourself of the symbolic material shackles. Burn it all. Burn it all to the ground, and you will truly be free.

15. Throw your phone into the ocean

Ring ring. Ring. Ring ring. Bzzz—always in your pocket, right by your junk, collecting infertile junk. Let's be real here: most of the information on your phone, you can live without. If anything, you’ll probably be better off without. Unplug. Violently submerge your phone in the nearest body of water.



You need more than a diet or a workout routine. You need a radical change in lifestyle if you want to make any real difference in your existence. Just do it.

Enjoyshanghai team