I stopped making ‘New Years Resolutions’ many years ago.
Instead, I set goals and they cover all different areas of my life. The challenge though (as I have found before) is that in the Christmas/New Year period, when life is good, breezy and we are relaxed, we tend to create these awesome theoretical goals for the New Year.
They sound great, however, when life ‘starts happening and reality moves in’ those goals (and good intentions) tend to get consigned to history and a couple of weeks, months and beyond, we look back thinking, ‘what happened?’
So, what can we do about it?
This year, I’ve decided to do something different.
Firstly, I’ve worked out ‘why these goals/habits are important to me?’
Secondly, I’ve set up a spreadsheet with various headings for the goals/new habits that I would to introduce/reintroduce into my life.
Some examples are ‘reading from a professional development book, walking and meditation.’ Each have a heading and I’ve put in (in the case of walking) how far I’ve walked and in the case of reading & meditation, I put in the amount of time.
You might be thinking that’ it’s easy to find the time to read or meditate…’but when you are running a business, am involved in BNI (breakfast business group) and have a heavy involvement in Toastmasters as member with additional roles, family commitments and all the hobbies/interests I have, then it’s easy for it to get forgotten or become erratic.
I’m not trying to start 10 new habits at once though, I’m bringing them in gradually.
I’m 9 days in and the spreadsheet system is working well. I can access it via Google Sheets on my phone as well so I can check up at any time to see how I am progressing.
The thought is, that once I’ve created the new habits and they become part of my life, I won’t need the spreadsheet.
In a couple of months time I’ll report on how this going. Till then, have an awesome New Year!
