How many times have you made yourself a huge list of
things that will change with the new year?
How many things on your list do you think you will still
be working towards by the end of 2014? How many will turn up again on
the 2015 resolution list?
New years resolutions are impossible to uphold, all we
do is set ourselves up for failure. Writing that fateful yearly list
is nothing more then self sabotage, something that as humans we are
already very adept at. But why does it fail? We start with such high
hopes and good intentions, but everything falls apart before the dust
on the new year has even settled.
The biggest downfall for well meaning resolutions is the
sheer size of most peoples list, how many of us put 10 or even 15
things on a list sculpting a huge change in our current lifestyle?
Too many things to do at once is overwhelming, where do you start?
Faced with the seemingly insurmountable our subconscious has already
given up before we have even consciously started.
Working in retail management, where self development and
improvement is as mandatory as adapting to change I often struggle
with all of my shortcomings and perceptions of failure. I use to
write huge lists of skills I needed to hone... Until I was given
invaluable advice, a self improvement list should be less then 5
things to work on, three is a perfect number, finish that list before
adding more.
Now isn't a list of New Years resolutions a very
personal self improvement list? So why are we loading our selves up
with so many things at once? Three things a year to work on is such a
manageable number, and if we did it one thing at a time we would have
4 months for each resolution to become reality. In my case I have
chosen to commit to just one thing and spend a whole 12 months
improving one very important aspect of my life.
The other thing that lays waste to our carefully
constructed list is a lack of detail (another lesson from retail
management), goals should be both challenging and achievable, we
don't truly appreciate what we achieve unless we work hard for it and
likewise hard work needs to lead us to something for us to continue.
What should our hard work lead us to? When is it enough? How will we
know we have achieved our gaol and nailed our resolutions?
We need to be able to measure our goals, knowing how far
we have come and how much further there is to go. The terms we set in
our new years resolutions need to be realistic and specific and we
need to give ourselves a fighting chance to achieve them.
For example lets take my one and only commitment for
2014 and break it down. I want to be a published author, so I could
write my list of one as Get published, I can even measure
that, either I will or will not get published in 2014. It is
definitely challenging and seems achievable, but it is open to all
kinds of interpretation. It is not specific and with the amount of
naivety and innocence I have as a publishing virgin it isn't setting
a very realistic picture.
I have a lot of work to do before I am ready to send my
manuscript off to publishing houses, publishing is so far away I will
surely get disheartened before achieving this goal. Challenging,
achievable and measurable with milestones along the way, this is what
I need. This is what we all need. So what is my actual one and only
New Years resolution?
I
will treat my writing like a part time job until such time as I can
swap it to a full time job. I will work on editing my WIP, and
educating myself about the professional world of publishing. After my
WIP is edited and I am ready to seek out a publisher I will keep
writing. I will not neglect my blogs, Facebook, Twitter or other
tools an author needs like I have in 2013.
There you have it, longer then your usual New years
resolution, if I was inclined I could make it into 4 individual yet
related resolutions. I know I can achieve this and I know I can watch
myself get closer to the dream of being published. It will be
challenging finding time for a part time job when I already work a 50
hour a week day job, but I will work hard on my one and only
resolution to improve something that is such a central aspect of my
life.
I know I can achieve my resolution with hard work and
dedication, how about you? What is on your New Years resolution list?
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