Do Over...New Year Resolutions

I have a deep passion for list making.  New Years is my Christmas.  I know I am a sicko but nothing brings greater joy for me than sitting down and planning out my year.  I love the imagining of the life I could have at the end of the year.  In my imagination there is a test drive of what being successful at any of the goals will feel like, taste like, look like.  I take it all very serious.   There is research put into each goal.

Some people call them resolutions, that term seems too flimsy for me.  I like goal, it is sturdier. The news is flooded with the probability of failure for all of our resolutions.  If you believe you are a sucker!  A statistic will not determine your fate, unless you allow it to.  1 in 4 people will fail, it is not because it is impossible to achieve but there is a lack of commitment.  The failure is a great opportunity.  Study the situation and understand what it is that is holding you back.  Is it a desire to focus on something else completely or that the goal was too big a step and you need smaller one to get going.

For many years, writing a novel sat perched on my list.  There were many starts and writing myself into a corner.  The hardest thing was going back to those and finally cleaning up the failure.  It was messy, with all these goopie loose ends that didn't make any sense.  The only way to move forward was...well more list for me.  It might not work for you,  buy having the bigger goal then the steps to complete it work for me.  I had to decide that pretending to write was not going to get it done, it wasn't going to make me happy.  I had to understand that 1,000 words a day is not a labor, it is habit.  I had to give up perfect to be able to write.  I would write 400 words then drown in them.  Correcting, rehashing, and rewording it into nothingness. Letting that go gave me heaps of time to finish the goal that I had wished for for years.

This could be your year.  Let go of the things that are holding you back, and see what you can achieve this year!