Resolutions Are Only Wishes

New Year’s resolutions still seem to be a big thing for a lot of people. I hear people talk about their resolutions a lot from about December 26 to January 15. Then the term resolution falls off the radar. Why is that? Because usually New Year’s resolutions are nothing more than wishful thinking. They are not really commitments. They should be, but they aren’t. So why make them?

I have not made a New Year’s resolution for so long that I can’t remember the last one. I never kept them. Well, I might have kept one or two. You know, “I’ll go to the gym three times a week in the month of January.” I could keep something like that. But if the resolution was anything longer or vague it would quickly be forgotten,

That is much the same thing I work with my clients on when setting goals. First of all let’s find something you really want to get done. Next let’s put it in writing. You have to write your goals down. I must have said this in my presentations to various organizations hundreds of times. If you don’t write it down it quickly gets lost in all the other clutter in your mind.

And next you have to put your resolutions in the context of some time frame. I mean if this is a serious goal, let’s treat it that way.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have resolutions or goals that cover a long time or even the rest of your life. Write it down. Then set out a plan on how to achieve that goal, or keep those resolutions in smaller increments of time. My advice is that if you are trying to change some behavior (smoking, eating, work habits) that you write down your goal and read it out loud two times each day. Read it when you get up and then again right before you go to sleep. Before long your unconscious mind will pick up the message and it will manifest itself in your daily life. Don’t believe me? try it for a month.

So rather than makes resolutions for myself each year that I am not going to keep, I set out to accomplish a few administrative tasks that I know will ease my daily life. I will tell you about some of those in my next post.