Gearing up for another year

With Christmas past, everyone is starting to throw around New Year's Resolutions.  And they are always the same and usually involve joining a gym or starting some similar overly ambitious change of habits that are ridiculously unrealistic and prone to failure.  We have all done it at one time or another: setup some kind of punishment for ourselves to "correct" bad behavior just because it's a new year.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who wanted to try to start blogging every single day when she hasn't blogged in at least two and a half months (and even before then the consistency was pretty sparse...hey, I'm not judging! Just stating the facts!).  I recommended she start off smaller, maybe commit a specific time slot a week to writing.  I told her about a couple tools I use to help me store thoughts I want to flesh out later (sometimes, much much later!).

Setting up manageable goals every month has been really helpful for me.  December has been a crap month for me as far as working on my goals and keeping up with previous ones.  The holidays kind of do that.  Instead of feeling guilty, I'm just shrugging it off and doing what I can, when I can.  I'll try again next month.

I've found being specific helps.  For example, instead of saying, "I want to lose weight!" I say, "I want to cut out processed sugars like soda and start walking 15 minutes per day!"  The latter example is much more definitive and less abstract.

I'm going to have a long list of goals for January, but they are going to be small, manageable, and specific so I actually have some chance of getting something done.  Somethings I've already started working towards (because why wait for a magic date when you're ready to begin now?) but I'll put much more effort and emphasis on them in the coming months.  And, as always, every mini-goal is a step in an overall effort to better myself in anyway.