The Great Resolution Debate

I know, I know.  The topic of resolutions is everywhere this time of year.  It's the New Year thing to do, right?  

New year's resolutions typically are things we say we are going to do: lose weight (number one year after year), get organized, save more (spend less), or stop doing: smoking, snacking between meals, fighting with a sibling.  

The burden of resolutions on 1 January is so great, that many of us just dig in and say, no more.  I hear it all time, "I'm not going to make a resolution because I'll just fail at it (break it)."

Truth is, there's nothing magical about the new year for making change except that it has that fresh start appeal.  You know, every day is a new day.  

So here's the thing: you can resolve to make change any time you like.  The magic is not in the timing, rather in understanding your motivation (and it's not because the clock struck midnight).  If you want to lose weight (since it's the most popular resolution), start by writing your story of what brought you to desire this change.  Got it?  Now write the story of you in the future once you've lost the weight (be as vivid as possible about how you look, feel, move, etc).  Put a stake in what success looks like (may be it's a number on a scale, maybe it's a clothing size). 

And if it's not weight loss you're after, you can apply this same process to any change resolution.  It's understanding and stating the precise coordinates to your destination (and yes, you have to understand where you are to understand where you want to go) that you're after.  

This is where the late great Yogi Berra's modification of a Lewis Carroll quote is oh so true.  "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else."  

So if you want to make change this year, understand where you are (this can take some brutally honest introspection) and clearly define where you're going.  The space between these two points, you will find, can conduct some amazing motivational energy.  

According to the Journal of Clinical Psychology, "People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don't explicitly make resolutions."  

The magic (after all) is not in the chime, but in the change (and the details).

You've got this!