Happy New Year’s Eve everyone! May your celebration be joyous and fun!
What are the Best resolutions for the New Year?
I don’t normally set Resolutions, here’s why:
Personally, I don’t set New Years Resolutions.
I don’t find much value in the idea of waiting until a “magical” day of January 1 to start something.
I also have seen so many people give up on their resolutions by the end of January, or possibly sometime in February.
Problems with the common resolutions people set
People like to pick the same type of resolutions year after year.
Year after year, they fail to follow through. The stores stock up on exercise machines, then they sit collecting dust in homes when people stop their exercise program.
There’s nothing wrong with having a goal to lose weight, or start a business, or save money for some anticipated expenses.
Often, however, people choose something they are not really committed to.
Keep in mind, at the end of the year, we are all most likely thinking about the upcoming year. Later on, we will have a more short-term focus. So we should not expect the current enthusiasm for the latest improvement we want to make will continue all year long.
I recommend you only choose something you REALLY REALLY want if you are going to set resolutions.
Napoleon Hill, in the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” says that a burning Desire is the first key to Success.
If you have a burning desire to do the thing you are intending, why wait until January 1st?
If you don’t, why do you want to waste your time working on it for a few short days or weeks and then give it up?
If someone else wants you to do it, that’s not a good reason. Do you want it?
Is it something you SHOULD want? You can always work on having more desire for it, but that is a separate and much different process.
A Good Resolution is a Decision or Specific Action
If you must use New Year’s Resolutions, I recommend you choose something that you only have to decide or take action on one time.
This might mean, starting a new business. Or hiring a coach to help you with a struggling business.
Once you ‘ve decided, and taken action for the first time, momentum will be on your side and it will be much easier going forward.
Don’t choose something that requires ongoing willpower (like I’m going to give up eating sweets every day for the entire year – that means every day you have a chance to fail to follow the plan).
Goals for the coming Year – a much better idea
I have quite a few goals myself. Goals for income, goals for growing a group I created on Facebook. Goals for leaving my job and ways I want to do more to serve my community and church.
You can set a goal for any specific time period, a year is certainly a good period of time.
I like goals because they are measurable, you can see how you are doing, and you can break a yearly goal down into monthly and daily goals as well. Then you can track and see exactly how you are doing at any given point.
I need that visual cue, I previously used it with a chart in Excel when I was on a weight loss program. It helped with perspective on weeks I didn’t seem to be losing very much. I could still see I was on a downtrend overall.
There is a lot of psychology in this approach. We are emotional creatures and we need to see signs of progress so we don’t get discouraged.
I’m going to keep this short today
This is my New Years message. I usually write 1000+ words but since it is a holiday I’m cutting myself a break.
I do have one New Years’ Resolution. Which is to post once per week on this website. I have the most time on Thursdays so this is the day I plan to do it.
Enjoy your celebrations. I am toasting you with the Sparkling Cider someone brought me just in time for the holiday.
Thanks for reading this year. See you around in 2021!
