As we enter a new year, a lot of us make resolutions to improve ourselves in some way … exercise more, eat better, drink less alcohol, etc. Unfortunately, these resolutions rarely make it past the first few days, if they even get that far.
Instead of setting yourself up for failure, a better idea might be to ask yourself three questions:
1) What do you want to start?
2) What do you want to stop?
3) What do you want to continue?
This is a simpler and more attainable thing to work toward than blanket resolutions. Taking time to assess our lives and the past year to figure out what is currently working well, what is not, and what needs improvement.
Psychologists and resilience experts agree that we need to be gentle and realistic with ourselves and that our goal-setting needs to include a healthy dose of reflection before resolution.
TAKE INVENTORY
Take some time to consider what obstacles you dealt with last year. What were your successes? What did you discover about yourself? Positive psychology tells us that we do better when we focus on our strengths … allow yourself to celebrate the small wins and the resolve you displayed throughout the year.
What did you learn last year … about yourself, about others, and about your business? Reframing difficulties as learning opportunities can help us to appreciate the lessons that adversity teaches us and helps to make us more resilient when the next unexpected challenge arrives. This reflection can also help in clarifying and setting goals for the coming year.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO START?
It can be very easy to frame our intentions negatively in terms of what we don’t want to happen or what we want to eliminate from our lives. Begin by determining what you want to bring into your life, what you want to put on hold, and what you would like to restart.
Focus on specific, realizable, incremental goals. New habits and skills are formed through repetition, so break larger goals up into smaller and more manageable tasks that you know you can manage. For example, you know that you want to exercise more, so you need to determine what type of exercise, for how long, and how many times per week. Break it up and build up to your ideal … saying you want to go to the gym four days a week for an hour might be daunting and deter you from actually doing it. However, saying that you’ll start with once per week and work up to twice a week within a month is an achievable goal that can be built onto from there!!
In business, you could decide that you want to be a better team leader, so you could decide to commit regular time to do one-on-one meetings with your team every week.
It is easy to focus all of our attention on ourselves but it is best to set some goals on relationship building and being present for other people.
Do you find it difficult to find time to yourself? Perhaps setting a goal to meditate or journal is something you should strive for … start small, like 10 minutes a week, and build up to 10 minutes per day!
With everyone working from home the last couple of years, it was very easy to fall into the “social media trap” of scrolling on our electronic devices. Perhaps dedicating yourself to putting the device away for the night 30 minutes before bedtime, and working up to an hour or two is an easily achievable goal.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?
During the pandemic, we came up with new habits and skills – some positive, some negative. Are there any new habits and skills that you would like to continue or develop further?
The takeaway from this is to take inventory of the good, the bad, and the potentially ugly, and determine where you want to go this year.
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