It’s that time of year when everyone is talking about their resolutions for the new year. How many times have you heard the question, “What is your resolution?” My next question would be, do you really take resolutions like these seriously? We all have things in our lives that we would like to be different. Otherwise we wouldn’t be making these resolutions.
So why is it that these resolutions don’t seem to stick? I have some ideas I would like to share.

My Ideas on Resolution Failure

1. If you were really serious about making a life-changing resolution, you wouldn’t wait until it is a novelty. I am totally a proponent of reflecting on your life and self-awareness, but I believe waiting until the end of the year is the wrong approach.
2. Those that are serous about life-changing goals already have them set in some form. They may not have a plan of action, but they are not something they just thought up.

Okay, so enough about my soapbox on resolutions. What can be done to change this? What are you going to do about it?

1. Generate your list of things in your life you would like to change.
2. Arrange them in order of priority.
3. Take the first two and identify your next step.

What do I mean by your next step?

In the next 24-48 hours, what can you do to move this forward? Write down an action. For me, one of my goals is to become a better communicator. This includes writing and speaking. To improve at writing I need to practice. So, my next step is to write one blog post tomorrow. I need to start by picking a topic. So I am going to jump on twitter and read some news for about 30 minutes to get some inspiration.

Steps for tomorrow

1. Read twitter tomorrow for 30 minutes.
2. Write down any inspiring topics that come to mind.
3. Begin writing my blog post.
4. Proofread and post.

I think you get the idea. So what is your next step? Have you found success in making life-changing goals instead of novelty resolutions? I want to hear from you!