ClydeStyle

Tag: making new year’s resolutions stick

  • No change yet? New Year looks the same as last?

    No change yet? New Year looks the same as last?

    January is always interesting when it comes to resolutions. It’s the month where you either sink or swim. New diet, new health challenge, new job, new plan — all subject to the fall in January.

    You spent money on new stuff. You spent time making vision boards and setting schedules and by week 2 or 3 the whole things in jeopardy.

    What went wrong?

    You had a perfect plan but it seems the motivation got stuck in customs in December. You have now begun the mental gymnastics of rationalizing your failure… well it’s not quite a failure yet but it’s getting there.

    Willpower is your enemy — and the fact that you may have done better with a partner or a group with the same goal.

    Willpower is a funny thing because even when the facts are stacked in your favor and your plan was routed in the best of empirical data — it still requires execution from you. I’m so sorry.

    I am wondering if what you decided was right for you? I’m also wondering were your motives for doing it in the right place?

    To make a real plan you need to address and solve a real problem. But if the problem is not exactly a problem for you, then you really won’t have the required amount of willpower to complete your task.

    So, wipe your slate clean and plan your resolutions quarter. Pick nine things of varying degrees of difficulty and group them in 3s. Make sure each group has something hard, easy and in between. Get it?

    Start working on them… skip the third quarter of the year and then finish the last quarter strong. Problems? Email me!

  • Resolutions should be a way of life

    Of the 50 percent of Americans who make resolutions, 90 percent of them break their resolution by the middle of January.

    It seems that the end of a year gives us a temporary conscience. It bothers us enough to acknowledge that there are things in our lives that need fixing, but nothing about the New Year makes us want to do anything more than admit it and move on.

    We know that there are people who don’t need to be in our lives and there are things we need to just flat out stop doing. Whether that is ending a destructive relationship or maintaining a healthy blood sugar level, we need to be far more serious about this.

    Here is a practical way to keep your resolutions. Don’t do a resolution for a year; do them by the day, hour or even minute.

    A resolution is a way of admitting we’re wrong and need to be better regarding something in our life. Why not make the idea of resolving ourselves a way of life? What would be wrong with keeping the imperfection ever before us – even to the point of letting others know that you recognize the need to change in this area. Then legitimately work on it. Really commit to the change and raising the bar of expectation in your life.

    By doing this daily, I think you will find that those around you will begin to acknowledge a different you. After all, that’s what we all want anyway, right?