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New Year's Resolutions for 2008
About.com : Pittsburgh ran a short article on the Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for 2008. Here’s their list:
- Spend more time with family and friends
- Find time to exercise
- Lose weight
- Quit smoking
- Enjoy life more
- Quit drinking
- Get out of debt
- Learn something new
- Help others
- Get organized
Creating a list of resolutions and goals for the upcoming year is a fantastic tool. It helps to solidify what you want to accomplish, focus your energy and will power, and it can serve as a daily reminder for you. But then what? Where do you go after you know, intellectually, what your goal is?
This May Sound Familiar
Let’s say your goal is to get out of debt this year. The first thing you might do is read a book on getting out of debt. Then you might put yourself on a budget so you can become more aware of what you’re spending your money on. Next you might create a spreadsheet to track your income and expenses and you make a vow to yourself to input your expenses every night. Each night you go to your computer and enthusiastically enter your expenses into the spreadsheet. You’re doing so well, you feel disciplined and in control. The month is flying by and you’ve captured all your expenses through today – January 20th. Tonight however, a movie that you’ve wanted to see for weeks is going to be on TV. You tell yourself, it’s just one night, you can input your expenses into the spreadsheet tomorrow. So you watch your movie and head to bed. Tomorrow night comes and, oh surprise, your brother calls and wants you to meet him for dinner in the city. Why not – he makes you laugh and after putting all those numbers into that spreadsheet all month, you could use a good laugh. When you arrive home, you’re much too tired to tackle inputting two days of expenses into your spreadsheet so you decide to skip tonight and catch up over the weekend. Saturday morning, afternoon, and evening come and go. You can almost hear the spreadsheet calling out for you now, can’t you? You promise yourself that you’ll start back up with this spreadsheet stuff on Monday.
What’s Holding You Back?
If we know what we want to do, then why can’t we do it? Because our conditioning and our old habits keep us from crossing the canyon between where we are today and where we want to be!
Instead of making a list of resolutions this year, why not make a list of the top 10 habits you think are holding you back from accomplishing your goals. Start replacing your old habits with new thinking that’s in alignment with where you want to be in your life. You’ll be absolutely amazed at your results!
Happy New Year!
