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Create your own motivation to achieve resolutions

By Paul Schaumburg posted 01-02-2018 09:26

  

With the new year’s arrival, most of us at least think about making resolutions. But keeping them? That’s another matter entirely! Internet statistics say 80 percent of resolution-makers have ditched them by February. By this new year’s end, only 8 percent will have kept their resolutions – and that number comes from self-reporting!

Google data that iQuanti disseminated shows these top seven resolutions:

  1. Get healthy.
  2. Get organized.
  3. Spend less and save more.
  4. Live life to the fullest.
  5. Learn new hobbies.
  6. Read more.

Most of us see the first three listed as good for us, but a real drag to achieve. The last four should and can be fun. Still, it takes commitment and, well… we’re busy.

A few days ago, Frances Bridges posted an article on Forbes on-line magazine entitled “Five Ways to Make Smarter New Year’s Resolutions:”

  1. Be specific.
  2. Break a big goal into smaller increments.
  3. Set deadlines.
  4. It’s OK to set big goals, if you forgive yourself for not achieving them in a year.
  5. Celebrate success.

If you’re frustrated with your inability or unwillingness to make and keep new year’s resolutions, to quit bad habits and/or to make good habits (As I am, by the way.), how about this instead? … Resolve to do things you like to do… but focus on reasonable ones. I don’t mean that you should think, “Hey, I like ice cream sandwiches, so I’ll have three at one sitting.” No, instead I mean resolutions like getting reacquainted with an old friend this winter, then another each in spring, summer, and fall.

You get my point… you really do make a change in your life and for the better, but it’s not something you dread and, done incrementally, it’s not overwhelming. … Then – and here’s the sneaky part – resolve that for every positive payoff you make, you then improve something a little tougher to achieve… like exercising for 20 minutes once per week, then twice and even three times.

It’s a punishment/reward cycle that turns Pavlov’s dog on his ear, yelping! And, since for most of us, nothing else has worked, why not give it a try?

 

2 comments
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01-03-2018 09:12

​Good post, Paul!  One could even argue that Bridges' suggestions for smarter resolutions would be good resolutions in and of themselves.

01-02-2018 10:55

Paul here... My friend a colleague, Lora Wimsatt of the Daviess County Schools, emailed to ask me whether No. 6 was meant to be blank so the new year's resolver can do nothing and feel good about it. ... See how sneaky these school PR types are? :-) I actuality, it simply was a mistake on my part in copying and pasting. ... Dang! And, here I'd resolved to be perfect this year! :-)