Build Your New Months Resolution

This time next year…….

Whatever it is you want to achieve or change in your life it takes time, you are not going to run a marathon or win a sprint just because you have decided it, you need to work to make it happen.

We have our dream and we set out to make that dream a reality.

The problem that often occurs though, is that a year is quite a long time (although it does not seem like it as you get older!) and the dream we start out with gets tangled and entwined by life’s challenges on the way. A bit like the wires behind the TV, they start out nice and neat but, somehow, next time you look, everything is tangled and you can’t tell which wire leads to what!

To help prevent the tangle in our lives we need to make certain we keep focused, and a good way of doing this is keeping control of your plan by breaking it down month by month and building a strategy for the coming weeks.

Ask yourself, what practical things can you do this month that moves you closer to your longer-term goal? How much weight do you need to lose this month? What distance do you need to run? How many words of your book do you need to write etc?

It is also a chance to review where you are right now in your plan.

Did you make a New Years resolution? If so, where, at the end of February, are you at in achieving it?

If you have made little or no progress, don’t beat yourself up over it or try to find excuses for why, just accept that things haven’t gone to plan so far and start preparing your plan for March.

If, however, you have made progress, celebrate that, give yourself a pat on the back then knuckle down and focus on the next stage.

Your new months resolution needs to concentrate on what is necessary to move you to the next stage of achievement and closer to your ultimate aim. If there is anything that you feel you have not done, so far, then evaluate that first. How important was it in your longer-term plan? Is there something else you need to do that is more important than the thing you have missed?

In other words, prioritise.

Sometimes we can become so bogged down in worrying about things we have not done that we fail to realise there are other things. equally or more important, that we can be doing right now. A lot of times when we change to something else, the other thing we were bogged down by becomes easier once we go back to it because we have had a chance to forget about it for a while.

Our new months resolution is also a means of keeping our focus on the end goal. Even where life distracts us, sitting down at the end of each month to think about the next months resolution, gives us a chance to assess and evaluate where we are now and where we need to be in a few weeks’ time. It becomes part of a continuous cycle of assess-plan-action that moves us forward and keeps what we want at the forefront of our mind.

So, take time this week to think about what you want to achieve next month and how you are going to achieve it. Think about things like the time you need to set aside from your normal routine, anything you need to get before hand or any other preparations that are key to finishing your mini monthly goal.

Your New Months Resolution is a way of keeping you in control of what YOU want to do in your life. Make your plan, stick to your plan and, at the end of next month, just see how much closer you are to your ultimate goal.