New Year's Resolutions: How To Do It

By Shara Koplowitz

New Year's Resolutions: How To Do It

Do your New Year’s resolutions include any of the following?

·        Get Healthy
·        Get Organized
·        Live Life to the Fullest
·        Learn New Hobbies
·        Spend Less/Save More
·        Travel
·        Read More

 As Nicole Spector reported for NBC News this year, these are the seven most popular New Year's resolutions,

based on how often the terms appear in Google searches. Get Healthy, the top resolution,

had almost 63 million searches, representing an increase of almost 14 percent over last year at the same time.

 

 


Bruce Weinstein of Forbes Magazine says the following are three primary obstacles that get

in the way of making your resolutions come true and he offers tips on how you can overcome them.

 

 

1. Ambiguous Terms
 
It’s great to say you want to get organized, but what exactly does that mean?

David Newman of doitmarketing.com plans to get organized, and he has a clear vision for what this means to him:

 

No piles in  his office


Files weeded out and current


No "landing zones" in his office where clutter might accumulate

 

For you, getting organized might mean something else entirely--fewer piles, perhaps,

or buying a filing cabinet to put your papers in order. You don't have to follow David's lead, but you do have to have

a well-defined idea of what getting organized means for you.

 

2. Overly Ambitious Goals

 

If this year you finished reading six books, what's the likelihood that you’ll quadruple that number next year? Slim to none.

When the poet Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

he probably didn’t mean coming up with goals we’re almost certain not to attain.

Amy Dernus Jones, Vice President and Executive Agent at BigSpeak speakers bureau, wanted to begin a hiking regimen

but realized it would take a while to work up to climbing a mountain. "Instead, I committed to a morning hike every Friday with my business partner,"

she said and discovered that this was challenging but doable. 

It’s one thing to have ambitious goals and another to have goals that will frustrate you when you predictably don’t achieve them.

 

 

 

3. Lack Of A Strategy

 

This is the most important reason why our New Year’s resolutions go unresolved. Suppose your goal is the third most popular one,

“Live life to the fullest,” and for you this means spending more high-quality time with your family.

How exactly do you plan to realize that goal?

Eric Gonon, Senior Executive Producer at Spectrum News NY1, explains how he intends to make this happen:

After working so many long hours the second half of 2017 to launch Mornings on 1, my top New Year’s resolution is to plan more quality time with my family.

I feel one of the best ways to do that is to take family vacations away from the day-to-day commitments and distractions at home and work.

Since our eldest child is headed to college next fall, we are planning a European vacation this summer to France, Spain and Italy.

We look forward to and cherish our family vacations together.

 

Part of what it means to have a strategy is to have metrics for evaluating your success.

As David Newman, the soon-to-be-better-organized marketing expert, explains,

“My accountability will be weekly Friday 5 p.m. check-ins with myself.

Sticking to this micro-commitment will prevent me from getting overwhelmed and keep me focused on tangible, visible results.”

 

David plans to hire a professional organizer to help him succeed with his ambitious but achievable goals.

 

 

Coming up with clear, attainable goals and creating a plan to reach them are some o

f the best ways we can care for ourselves this year and beyond.

 

 

 

Author: Shara Koplowitz

Date Published: January 8, 2018