HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!

Now, before you roll your eyes at yet another lesson about New Year’s resolutions, here are some practical suggestions to help you make realistic goals and keep yourself on track to meet those goals.

Take a deep breath and smile! The new year is fresh and filled with potential. Whatever unfulfilled dreams you had last year is history. Leave them behind and don’t look back.

It’s time to focus on what you want and need to accomplish going forward. Forget about calling them New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, call them New Life Goals.

Each new year is a golden opportunity to make meaningful life adjustments to create a better personal world. I’ve learned that deciding on the right New Life Goals can be daunting. You may have one BIG change you wish to make or there may be many small adjustments you’d like to incorporate into your life. The principles of change are the same for both: Plan, Execute, Adjust and Repeat.

*The key word here is REPEAT!*

For meaningful change to happen, you must make that change a habit. If you want to be more active, you must get your body used to whatever you want it to do by actually doing that action. If it’s a new thing you want to accomplish in life (like maybe writing a book), you need to practice doing that until it becomes a habit. Start with setting aside a couple of hours a day to write.

It’s said that anything you do as a ritual each day for two consecutive weeks becomes a daily habit. In that sense, after fourteen days you will be in the habit of sitting down to write (or whatever it is you’ve decided as your change) and that becomes a good habit. If you miss doing it one day, it will feel wrong -> and that’s a good thing!

Adjust your life to achieve your goal rather than adjusting your goal.  Create a new habit and repeat it as often as possible to make it a part of your life.

Meaningful changes in your life happen by identifying goals, incorporating them into your life and making that specific change a habit—and it’s a continual process of improvement.

If you’ve identified multiple goals for 2018, you’ve created an extra challenge for yourself. You can achieve all of your goals, but you simply have to work on one before starting another. Prioritize each goal and tackle them one at a time.

Attempting to achieve multiple goals at once can be overwhelming and it sets you up for failure. Achieving meaningful change takes focus. Don’t dilute your effectiveness by focusing on several changes at once.

The important thing to remember is that this is a New Year. The slate is totally clean and you have all year to achieve the goals you’ve identified.

Tackle the one goal that’s most important to you first. Attack it with gusto! Achieve it! Own it!

Thoughts? Comments? I’d love to hear them!