The Shorter Answer Would Be…!

What couldn’t I do differently? There are very few elements of my life that I feel like I couldn’t improve, and I am sure that’s the case for so many of us. The decision to make once you have identified areas of your life that you could improve is to ask three questions. What are the most important areas to improve? What are those areas that would make the biggest difference to the quality of my life? What changes can I implement now?

So many of us love making New Year’s Resolutions. No, let me rephrase that. So many of us feel like we should be making New Year’s Resolutions! So many of these resolutions fail because we are making them for the wrong reasons. We are making them on a particular day because we feel under social pressure and we set our sights too high. We are not focusing on the process, we are focusing on the result. We do not have a plan for what to do if things go wrong, so when they do we can’t react effectively.

Now, I have made resolutions in seven areas. Do I expect to succeed in all of them? No. Do I have a plan for what to do when things don’t work? Yes. If you look at the first resolution below, you will see that it’s a weekly fitness regime. Now, as I write, it is the end of the first week of January and I have been ill throughout the week. Does that mean my resolution has already failed? No it doesn’t. I know that it’s about developing a new routine so I am focusing on the long term. I have written off Week 1 and will start when I feel much better, because trying to force myself to do this when I am ill is a guarantee that I will fail both short term and long term.

I have aimed very high this year deliberately because I know that with luck three or four of these resolutions will stick for the whole year and maybe one or two will start to succeed as the year progresses. I am happy that my approach is the one best designed to help me do things differently. Wish me luck especially when I get better!