New Year's Resolutions

This is the time of year when people reflect on things they've accomplished or didn't. It is a time of evaluation and planning; a time of preparing to take action and change. The best way to do this is to be honest with yourself. We can't truly improve if we can't see the forest through the trees. Try to step back from your reflections and try to look at it from your partner's view. Or, instead of your partner, choose a person whom you respect and who portrays traits you would like to emulate. How would that person describe the circumstances you're evaluating and possibly want to change? You don't have to share your answer with anybody. Keep it to yourself, but be as honest as possible.

Look at both the positive and negative aspects - the big picture. Congratulate yourself for all of the positive. Reward yourself. Now, plan to change the negative. If it's a big list, don't try to change it all at once. Taking on too much change all at once, depending on what it is, could doom you to failure. At least, it may stack odds against your success. This is the best way, IMO, to choose New Year's Resolutions, because it increases your chances of achieving them.

The next best way to increase your odds of accomplishment is to have a solid action plan on how to resolve what you'd like to change. Many people often leave out this step and wonder why they weren't able to keep their resolutions. Some of those people spend excessive amount of time criticizing themselves for failure. This is unproductive. Spend some time working through the details of how you achieve your new year's resolution. Don't be shy about getting a buddy to work on the same goal or to ask for support from the people who are closest to you. Support and encouragement goes a long way in helping people, but it is often undermined.

One of my new year's resolutions is to work on balancing my mind, body, and spirit. My action plan includes specific times on when I will meditate, work, and do yoga. It includes the type of yoga, props, and an instructional video because I just started yoga a couple days ago. I already scheduled yoga classes to be recorded from the FitTV cable channel. This is one small example of how I plan to achieve my New Year's Resolution per my suggestion above. It is fairly simple instead of elaborate, but it is still specific. The next part of my plan is to implement this new regime for 40 days and track my progress daily.

This is part of a process I call AWAIT. It is an acronym for the following: Awareness, Willingness, Action plan, Implementation, and Tracking. You can read the full article here.

For other tips on choosing and keeping new year's resolutions, I recommend watching this short video of my friend, Coach Jenn Lee, who has had success helping many people. It is called How to keep a New Year's Resolution.

Good Luck! Feel free to keep me posted on your progress.


Judy Graybill
Stepfamily Coach,
Sensible Steps, LLC
Solutions for Today's Families
http://www.sensiblestepsolutions.com
http://www.twitter.com/StepfamilyCoach
judy@sensiblestepsolutions.com