Senso1970's Blog   Thoughts, ramblings, and accountability from sunny Madison, AL

Today is the first day of the new year, 2019.  You have 364 more days to come after this one.  If you’re like most people you made a number of resolutions today on what you’d like to accomplish using those 364 remaining days.  Here are a few tips on how to do just that.

First and foremost, reconsider your resolutions one more time before you set them in stone.  Are they reasonable?  If you resolve to lose 200 pounds next year, maybe you need to take it down a notch to a more reasonable 100 pounds.  That’s still not an easy task and will challenge you to accomplish it, but it can be done.  200 pounds, not so much.  Are they within your power to accomplish?  Even with the law of attraction you need to believe you can get it done.  If you resolve to do something that your heart doesn’t truly believe you can, you’re setting yourself up for failure.  So if your resolution is to find the love of your life, but you doubt your ability to attract the love of your life, change your resolution to something that helps you move towards that initial resolution, and you feel you can accomplish.  Perhaps resolve to have greater self-love.  Or resolve to build a characteristic of yourself that you think will help attract the kind of person into your life that you’d like to have a romantic relationship with.

Second, once you’ve settled on resolutions that are reasonable and that you feel you can accomplish, create a game plan for how you can accomplish them.  Give each month, or week if suitable, a mini goal that moves you towards accomplishing your resolution.  By breaking it down into more manageable steps you’ll not view that task as so daunting.  It’s the difference between trying to jump to the second floor versus taking the stairs.

Third, track your progress.  Keeping a journal of your journey serves two purposes.  First, as you accomplish each goal you create a reminder of it for yourself to review in the future.  Feeling a little stuck or unsure if you can reach the next mini goal?  Just go back and look over all the progress you’ve made in reaching prior mini goals to remind and motivate yourself.  Second, it gives you a better overview to see what is and isn’t working.  An example would be in your journal you see that every time you have a cheat day your progress lags a bit.  So obviously you’d want to forgo the cheat day.  Or maybe you’ve resolved to be more positive, but you’re struggling a bit.  You look back at your journal and see that when you hang out with a certain friend your mood gets dragged down.  Time to start making tough decisions about who you spend your time with.

Fourth, remember to be flexible.  You thought that your resolution was reasonable and achievable but a few months in it’s clear you aimed a little too high.  It’s okay to change the resolution to a more reasonable and achievable one.  Or hopefully it’s the other way around.  Your resolution turns out to be a little too easy to achieve.  Move the goal posts farther away.  Maybe four months in you realized that what you thought you wanted to achieve with a resolution isn’t your true goal.  Your resolution was to live a more minimalist lifestyle.  You’ve gotten rid of a lot of your stuff but you don’t feel better for it.  Then it dawns on you that it wasn’t the clutter in your apartment that was bothering you, it was the apartment itself.  Change your resolution to finding a new apartment.

Finally, and this goes hand in hand with flexibility, remember that Day One isn’t the only day you can make resolutions on.  Anytime during the year you realize that a resolution isn’t working out for you, drop it.  But replace it with a new one.  Halfway through the year you’re well on your way to meeting your resolution to be a better athlete and you want to up the ante.  Make a resolution to enter a Spartan race before year’s end.  Three months in and you’re making excellent progress on writing that book you resolved to get done before 2019 is over, resolve to start another book as well.  Or maybe resolve to increase your creativity in another area like drawing or painting happy little trees.  You could be doing really well with resolutions in one area of your life, like finances, and decide you’d like to improve other areas, like fitness.  So create a new fitness resolution.  You don’t have to wait until Day One 2020 to do that.

Hopefully these tips will help you along your journey with your resolutions this year.  But the most important tip I can give you is to take the first step.  Michael Jordan correctly said that you miss all the shots you don’t take.  So try.  Even if you don’t complete the resolution, if you’ve moved from where you were to down the road a bit to where you are, you’ve done a great thing because you’re better for it.

And that’s the resolution we should make every day.  To be a little better than we were the day before.  So here’s to being better.  Have a great day.