Why I Quit Making Resolutions and Started Making Life Changes

We have all gotten caught up in writing those impossible lists of resolutions for the new year. Those lists have never worked for me. I eventually quit making them. At the end of last year I finally figured out what works better for me than a list of resolutions I won’t keep. That’s setting goals. In the process, goal-setting and resolutions were redefined for me. I had to think about resolutions as life changes and that these changes will take time to figure out. Today we're going to look at resolutions as life changes and how to succeed at making those changes.

1. A resolution equals a life change.

When I made those lists of resolutions in high school, I saw them as a task I had to do every day for a year. Once I started missing a day or two (and you inevitably do!), it was easy to miss more days then just chalk the whole attempt up to a failure. Then I had to wait till next January 1st to give myself a second chance.

Now, I see resolutions as changes I want to make in my life. It’s hard to make a life change and get it right from the first try. You need room to mess up, to grow. Let’s say I want to exercise more this year. The first thing I do is choose a type of exercise I would like to incorporate into my life. (For me, it’s walking, just in case you wanted to know. :) ) I then decide how many times a week I would like to walk. I did this last year and started out with five days a week. In no time I saw this wasn’t going to work for me. I live in a state that when it rains, I mean, it rains. So there’s no walking for me on days like that. But instead of feeling like I “just can’t keep my goal” I decided to change it to something more feasible like “walk 3 out of 5 days a week.” I now keep this goal no problem. Eventually I won’t even need to keep track of whether or not I do this goal because it will have become part of my weekly routine.

2. Start with one thing at a time.

Another important tip I learned was to work on only one large goal at a time. I am famous for trying to do too many new things at once. I quickly overwhelm myself and get nothing done. After working through the mentality that getting one thing done a day was better than writing a list of ten things to do and completing none of them, I was able to start achieving my goal of choice. I choose one large goal and write down ideas for how I will accomplish it. I adjust what doesn’t work for me on a daily basis until I find the method that best suits my personality, likes and dislikes.

For example, I have a goal to complete a short book in one month. I don’t know how many times I attempted and failed at this one. But then I made a list of things that work for me. Writing short chapters, keeping the book around 10,000 words, choosing characters and plots that interest me and touch on at least one of my passions, these were all things that contributed to me being well on my way to success this month.

3. Stop looking at how others are doing it and figure out what you need in order to succeed.

This was a big one for me. It was so much easier to watch videos on how others got their book finished than it was to sit down and figure out where I was going wrong. I spent all my time trying methods that worked for other people (only to eventually fail), instead of making a list of what might work for me.

I encourage you to study yourself, because reaching your goals and following your dreams is all about being the best YOU that you can be. It’s about learning what you need in order to be motivated to reach those goals. Once you start giving yourself what you need, you may be surprised at how easy it is to reach your goals.

Cheers to you and your success! If you have an experience you’d like to share about reaching one of your goals, please leave it in the comments below, and keep being you!

Next Week: "Creating Daily Goals Based on Your Long Term Goal"

Why I Changed Everything About the Way I Set Goals

Hey, everyone. It's a new year and time to brush off those resolutions that have been gathering dust since last January.

This year I have made a commitment to quit making resolutions and start setting goals that work for me. I'll show you three things that worked for me in goal-setting. But, hey, these three things may not work the same way for you as they did for me. So I encourage you to figure out your own personalized list for the area in your life that you want to improve this year.

1. Find what works for me
This was an actual goal I set several months ago. I realized I was constantly looking at the examples of others, trying to copy them, then ending up disappointed when their methods didn't work for me. I started asking myself questions like If I could create my writing day in any way I wanted, how would I do it? My answer included things like 1) Have coffee as soon as I wake up. 2) Stay in my robe and PJ's until I actually felt like showering. 3) Put off all my errands till the end of the day so I could give the best part of my mind to my writing in the morning.

Immediately there were protests from the peanut gallery in my brain. "But what will people think of you?!" "You know only lazy people wear their robe and don't shower till after lunch." But it was like I had discovered a magical strength in my body. Was I going to let these critical voices keep me from pursuing my dream of a writing career? NO! So I kept my robe on! I drank coffee and gazed dreamily out the window when I got up in the morning! And no matter how much those pesky errands tried to pressure me into getting them done, I ignored them until I chose to tend to them.

Stand up for how you need to order your day or organize your space so that you can create. Find what works for you.

2. Write what works and doesn't work for me
Each day I wrote down ways I felt I was either successful or had failed in the goals I had set for that day and in how I managed my time. (I have the tendency to feel like a failure even when I achieve a difficult task. Not at all a helpful quality.) After writing out my list, I could see clear ways in which I had succeeded. In fact, the list of things I was happy with was longer than the list of my failures, so I declared that, overall, my day had been a success. 

When I had a day where the list of failures was longer, I assured myself that was not a problem because I was in the process of learning...which leads me to my last point. 

3. For the things that don't work, write a list of ideas on how to change these areas or goals so they will work for me
So every time I "failed" I wrote down what I could do next time that would work better for me. For example, I kept setting more goals per day than I had time to accomplish. So one change I made was to be more honest about how long each goal would take to complete. By making this change, I had a realistic list of goals that I could accomplish instead of overloading myself and setting myself up for failure. Even though, logically, I know not to set more goals than one can accomplish during a set time, but I wasn't realizing that was what was holding me back until I took the time to write down my successes and failures.

So this is why I changed how I set goals: I wasn't reaching my goals because something wasn't working for me. So I took the time to figure out what does work for me. I still write what is working and not working for me when I get stuck on a particular goal I can't seem to reach.

Now go out there and write your own ideas of what might work for you. Choose an area you want to improve, whether it's writing or something more personal like making more friends this year or that notorious "lose weight this year" resolution. But this year, you're actually gonna do it, 'cause you're going to figure out which methods work best for you so you can accomplish those meaningful goals.

Be sure to come back. We'll be talking about goals and goal setting all January long to keep you excited and inspired.

Leave a comment about the one goal you want to tackle this year--for good. You can do this! You're going to set your goals this year, and reach them!

Next week: "I Quit Making Resolutions and Started Making Life Changes"