New Year, New You? --Making New Year's Resolutions Count!

Are you one of the millions of people that made the New Year's resolution to lose weight, get healthier, or exercise more? If so, will you actually follow through?

If you just say you want to do something with no game plan, it's very likely you won't accomplish your goal. Studies show that the majority of New Year's Resolutions are not accomplished. But you can be in the minority! You can make this the year that you reach your goals! All it takes is a little preparation and determination!

I found a great article dealing with this subject at Goal Setting Articles: Making New Year's Resolutions Count. Some of the information it outlined is below.

1. Choose The Right Resolution. Failure is virtually assured at the offset because the resolutions are not made with serious intent and deliberation. The first trick is to choose the right resolution, for the right reasons. Give some thought to what you really want and why you want it. Identifying the "why" helps you avoid setting goals for the wrong reasons. Next, decide how difficult to make your resolution. Optimal performance comes from goals that are difficult, but not so difficult that we don't believe they can be accomplished. Finally, be specific about your resolution and make it official. A resolution "to lose 15 pounds by April 30th" is much more effective than the ambiguously phrased goal "to lose weight." Once you've decided on the wording, formally commit. Make the commitment formal. The more ceremonious, the better.


2. Create A Plan. Most resolutions fail because people stop once they've made the resolution. Upon clarifying the exact goal that you are setting, next create a plan for how you intend to accomplish your goal. With any reasonably good plan, you are fairly likely to make significant progress or actually accomplish your goal. Without a plan, you are very unlikely to succeed. The key to constructing a good plan is to identify the exact steps that you will take toward accomplishing your goal, and assigning due dates to those steps.


3. Stay On Track. With a good plan in hand, making significant progress toward your goal may require very little discipline for those who live strictly by daily planners and love nothing more than checking off items on our to-do lists. But for those of us who can use a little help with staying on top of details, the answer, once again, is to seek outside help. The idea is to find some external thing that keeps you motivated, such as a personal fitness trainer.


4. Remain Flexible And Keep Going! A recent realization among goal-setting experts is the need to continually modify our approach—sometimes even changing or abandoning a goal altogether. The reason for this is that circumstances beyond our control frequently crop up at the most unexpected and inconvenient times. So long as we build flexibility into our expectations, we can simply adjust things as we go. It's therefore best to periodically reevaluate our goals and plans, perhaps once per quarter for a year-long goal such as a New Year's resolution. Finally, the flip-side of setting difficult resolutions is that you must remember to acknowledge partial success. Losing 15 pounds is cause for celebration, even if your original goal was to lose 20 pounds. If you are just one step closer to your goal, then you are better off than before you began. Pat yourself on the back and keep on going!

If you need more help setting your resolution and planning your course, the MyGoals.com website is a resource devoted to "helping you identify and accomplish anything you set out to do." The site is designed to "help you easily structure a plan of attack, breaking your goal into manageable, bite-sized tasks. We then help keep you on track, making adjustments along the way, until you've reached your goal."

So what are your goals for 2008? Let me know and I'll be glad to check-in on you and help hold you accountable!

Have a great 2008!