New Year's Resolutions You Can Keep
This picture represents how I feel about time: the minutes, hours, and days all melt together and before I know it, my January New Year’s resolutions and goals melt into December 31.
My traditional goals to exercise more and get fit are already in the stage of “I can’t tell if I’ve broken my New Year’s Resolutions or if I am taking my time getting started on them.” However, my goals to strive for excellence are still bright and relatively untarnished.
Every New Year can mean a new you if you understand that you don’t have to be the same person you were yesterday. Every morning when you roll out of bed and place your feet squarely on the floor, you can be a new person. You can be someone different, especially if your goal is to strive for excellence in living your life.
Excellence in living means:
1. Work from your uniqueness. Stop beating yourself up for human frailties. Every human being has a different set of weaknesses…and strengths.
I think limitations are God’s way of keeping humans humble and striving to learn and grow. When you stop the negative self-talk and work to be the unique person you are, amazing things happen inside.
Strengths are fascinating because individuals have a hard time seeing their own. They are much better at seeing their weaknesses.
To celebrate your unique strengths, take a minute to observe yourself. Analyze the activities you enjoy -- as that is probably one of your strengths. Work to do more of what you enjoy.
Find a friend who is honest with you and ask them what your strengths are.
Another way to discover your strengths is to take the Galup Poll Strengths Finder Assessment. Click here to see my assessment.
2. Keep your commitments. In order to keep your job, reputation, and friends, 2012 needs to be a year of tending to your stewardships and keeping your promises. This starts with basic time management tools: a calendar for recording deadlines and due dates plus a daily to-do list.
In order to keep this resolution, it is important to be careful how many tasks and extra projects, outside of your normal tasks you volunteer for or for which you accept assignments. To maintain your integrity, when circumstances dictate you need a little more time than the deadline on the calendar allows, negotiate immediately with the people expecting your work.
3. Make incremental advances toward achievements. When I want instant food, I eat an apple, peel a banana, open a hot chocolate packet, or wheel into a fast food restaurant. If I want information on any topic, I merely Google it and get thousands of instant references. If I want to speak with someone in ‘real-time’ I can use Google Talk.
I am so used to being pampered by instant gratification that it is easy for me to forget that achievement is disguised in overalls and looks like work. It takes a plan and daily effort to make steady and incremental advances toward long term achievements.
For me, writing just one page in a book I want to publish is a triumph when placed against the backdrop of tactical tasks and a myriad of obligations in the different roles I play in my circle of professional and personal activities.
For you, incremental progress may be reading 2-3 pages in a book or listening to a podcast that will advance your professional knowledge.
4. “Harmonize” the elements of life. I became frustrated with the concept of balance your life when I found it didn’t work for me. Balance implies two elements, work and home. It seemed to me that when one was up, the other was down, much like an old fashioned teeter-totter. I didn’t like my home life being up and my work life down or vice versa.
However, many elements can harmonize. Think of the harmony in a basic chord, a DO-ME-SOL chord. DO represents work life, ME represents taking care of personal needs and SOL represents social relationships.
By harmonizing these elements, not balancing them, I can keep my sanity and maintain a certain level of performance in each area. It will work for you, too. Experience a sample of harmonizing your life by viewing a clip on my Vimeo Channel entitled Happiness.
These are resolutions you can keep and when December 31 comes, you will feel proud as you celebrate the good things that have happened in 2012.
Download a complimentary poster for use in your next management or team meeting: 4 Resolutions you CAN keep.
This picture represents how I feel about time: the minutes, hours, and days all melt together and before I know it, my January New Year’s resolutions and goals melt into December 31.
My traditional goals to exercise more and get fit are already in the stage of “I can’t tell if I’ve broken my New Year’s Resolutions or if I am taking my time getting started on them.” However, my goals to strive for excellence are still bright and relatively untarnished.
Every New Year can mean a new you if you understand that you don’t have to be the same person you were yesterday. Every morning when you roll out of bed and place your feet squarely on the floor, you can be a new person. You can be someone different, especially if your goal is to strive for excellence in living your life.
Excellence in living means:
1. Work from your uniqueness. Stop beating yourself up for human frailties. Every human being has a different set of weaknesses…and strengths.
I think limitations are God’s way of keeping humans humble and striving to learn and grow. When you stop the negative self-talk and work to be the unique person you are, amazing things happen inside.
Strengths are fascinating because individuals have a hard time seeing their own. They are much better at seeing their weaknesses.
To celebrate your unique strengths, take a minute to observe yourself. Analyze the activities you enjoy -- as that is probably one of your strengths. Work to do more of what you enjoy.
Find a friend who is honest with you and ask them what your strengths are.
Another way to discover your strengths is to take the Galup Poll Strengths Finder Assessment. Click here to see my assessment.
2. Keep your commitments. In order to keep your job, reputation, and friends, 2012 needs to be a year of tending to your stewardships and keeping your promises. This starts with basic time management tools: a calendar for recording deadlines and due dates plus a daily to-do list.
In order to keep this resolution, it is important to be careful how many tasks and extra projects, outside of your normal tasks you volunteer for or for which you accept assignments. To maintain your integrity, when circumstances dictate you need a little more time than the deadline on the calendar allows, negotiate immediately with the people expecting your work.
3. Make incremental advances toward achievements. When I want instant food, I eat an apple, peel a banana, open a hot chocolate packet, or wheel into a fast food restaurant. If I want information on any topic, I merely Google it and get thousands of instant references. If I want to speak with someone in ‘real-time’ I can use Google Talk.
I am so used to being pampered by instant gratification that it is easy for me to forget that achievement is disguised in overalls and looks like work. It takes a plan and daily effort to make steady and incremental advances toward long term achievements.
For me, writing just one page in a book I want to publish is a triumph when placed against the backdrop of tactical tasks and a myriad of obligations in the different roles I play in my circle of professional and personal activities.
For you, incremental progress may be reading 2-3 pages in a book or listening to a podcast that will advance your professional knowledge.
4. “Harmonize” the elements of life. I became frustrated with the concept of balance your life when I found it didn’t work for me. Balance implies two elements, work and home. It seemed to me that when one was up, the other was down, much like an old fashioned teeter-totter. I didn’t like my home life being up and my work life down or vice versa.
However, many elements can harmonize. Think of the harmony in a basic chord, a DO-ME-SOL chord. DO represents work life, ME represents taking care of personal needs and SOL represents social relationships.
By harmonizing these elements, not balancing them, I can keep my sanity and maintain a certain level of performance in each area. It will work for you, too. Experience a sample of harmonizing your life by viewing a clip on my Vimeo Channel entitled Happiness.
These are resolutions you can keep and when December 31 comes, you will feel proud as you celebrate the good things that have happened in 2012.
Download a complimentary poster for use in your next management or team meeting: 4 Resolutions you CAN keep.
