Don’t Waste Your Time on New Year’s Resolutions!

I don’t believe in resolutions.

Now I do believe in evaluating our lives, determining where we want to improve, thinking about why, what end result I am looking for and then reverse engineer or “back into” how to make it happen.

My observation is that many people start the New Year setting a lot of unrealistic expectations for themselves without thinking things through and then, within a short time, give up. 

What ultimately happens is they end up in a worse place than where we started, sometimes physically but mostly emotionally. Beating ourselves up, feeling defeated and that’s the end of it. 

Does this sound familiar? Do you know anyone who does this? Or is this you?

Well, if it’s you, try not to feel bad. That is a waste of time.

I encourage you to treat yourself as a cherished friend, so when you’ve got that internal dialogue going in your head, speak kind words. 

I have worked in the personal growth industry with Disney Institute, The  John Maxwell Company, and have been a student of human behavior practically my whole life. I’m fascinated by what we as humans do and why we do it so I’m constantly paying attention to others and especially to my own behavior.

Every New Year, I start a process of reflecting and evaluating the previous year and then determine what I want to achieve in the upcoming year. Then I constantly check in throughout the year to see how I’m doing. 

This is an ongoing process of trying to be better today than I was yesterday...therefore NO resolutions. I hope that when you think of yourself, that thinking provides a sigh of relief. 

Here are the steps that work for me, give it a try:

• Plan a specific time to go and think – do this as early as possible, and by the way, it doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the year. It’s never a bad time to map out our lives.
• Have some systematic way to evaluate where you are and where you want to go. I use the Create Your Best Life Wheel  as a quick gauge.
•  Determine what areas you want to focus on, why you want to focus on those areas, think about what outcomes you would like, then back into specific actions that will get you there.
• Document, document, document…when you do this, your chances of achieving are increased dramatically, so write it down.
• Now go make it happen! (You can download the wheel right here on this page!) Create Your Best Life Guide.

Just do it! Don’t overthink things, make it a priority. Most people put more effort into planning a vacation than they do planning their lives. 

There is that saying, “No one plans to fail, they just fail to plan.” Or another one I LOVE is from Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.”  

So true, huh? 

One thing we won’t get back is time. We must live intentionally, so when we’re lying on our deathbed, we can look back and know we did the best we could with the life we had.

Sorry to be so morbid but it’s the truth, right?? Make 2020 the best year ever!