Why is it always so easy to make a ton of New Year’s resolutions, but then it’s so hard to stick to them?
I used to make a long list of all the things “I was going” to do in the new year. In my opinion, it was a stringent way for me to raise the bar quite high for myself. Of course, most of the things that I put on the list didn’t make it to the second or third month of the new year.
Why? You ask…Because I think the list was always too long. Often written in a day. Maybe even on a paper napkin.
No wonder it wasn’t effortless.
Over the years, as I have grown in my own personal development, I relaxed my stringent lists of popular new year’s resolutions.
I always felt like everyone got up at the end of December and screamed: where is YOUR new year’s resolution? You don’t have it? Omg – you’re a loser!
Then I thought to myself, stop this nonsense. I don’t want to make any stupid resolutions. Instead, what if I do easy weekly, quarterly, and monthly goals for myself? What if I made my plans more accessible to achieve? Sort of like dividing all of my new year’s resolutions into small, manageable pieces. What if the entire new year was one big, long resolution split into small blocks of time? OMG – I must be related to Einstein.
And you know what? When I started to implement my goals into small chunks and spread them out for the entire year. I noticed that I was actually able to accomplish them. Bit by bit. Baby steps! A win!
On the other hand, what if I didn’t accomplish a goal? Well, I certainly didn’t cry about it. I just moved that goal into the next week or next month. How easy was that? Isn’t that a much less stressful way to deal with things? Forget about that long new year’s damn list. Who has time for that?
Furthermore, how about patting yourself on the back for accomplishing all the goals you did complete? Even the year before. I think we women sometimes forget and keep the standards so high for ourselves, that we don’t bother looking back at all the things we’ve done.
But glancing and noting progress is crucial to our personal and professional development. That’s why I now keep a journal of all my accomplishments. I write down even the smallest things I achieved. Because, who knows, I might forget. And then who is going to remind me when I’m having a bad day? Nobody.
As such, whenever I feel like I am not accomplishing enough, I go back and read that journal. Then I think to myself – hey – you’ve done a lot in the past few months! Good job, girlfriend! Self-pep talk – we all need it sometimes. Then I put the journal back to my files, and I move on to keep treading the path to greatness!
Let’s talk about some examples. Let’s say you want to lose weight. You make a January 1 resolution. Then January 10 is your friend’s birthday party. You go to the party, you overeat. Bam! New year’s resolution is gone! You give up. But if you decided to start over the next day or next week. You still would have a chance to make the resolution. Then why not start over? It’s very simple. Only we make it so complicated.
Another example, at the end of the year, you get all pumped up about the resolution called “get fit” and go out and join a gym. January 1, you run to the gym when everybody and their mother is waiting outside for the gym to open. Did you ever notice that beginning March, April, all the gyms usually get less crowded? That’s because the gym newbies burned out, and their new resolutions failed, so they decided to quit.
In conclusion, let me end this rant with one of my favorite anonymous quotes:
“Every day is a chance to turn things around.”
Yes, my friends, every day we have a chance to make things new and make our own new year’s resolutions and start things over.
Why not make that day today?
