My Take On Resolutions

For years I made a conscious effort to workout at a local gym wherever I lived. I felt that taking care of one’s body was one of the most important parts of a person life. With that in mind, I would always get frustrated around this time of year (January). I would show up at my local gym, and it was always more crowded than usual. But I didn’t have to wait too long for the crowds to dwindle. Usually around the end of February, first of March I would only see the regulars again. This observation over time is one of many that made me decide to not do New Year’s Resolutions. I could only see people that failed at them, and since I didn’t want to be a failure, I wouldn’t make any resolutions. It wasn’t until later that learned how important it was to set goals for myself.

 

Setting goals is just the beginning.  You should know where you are when you set the goal, the path you are going to take to get there, and monitor progress over a period of time. It’s also important to have short term, midterm, and long term periods attached to your goals. You should ask questions like, “Where do I want to be in 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and 10 years?” But don’t just ask, write down your answers. Use spreadsheets. Tape these to the refrigerator, the mirror in your bathroom, or even the rearview mirror in your car.

 

Since Michelle and I don't necessarily do goals out right each year, I thought I would share a little of how Michelle and I try to stay focused on improving our lives. Let me know what you think.

 

We have 5 categories that that we adopted a few years ago that cover almost every area of our life. We try to improve in each category by incorporating 1 or 2 goals for a given category that will help us improve in that category for the given year. They include the following:

1)      Spiritual Growth

 

2)      Financial Stewardship

 

3)      Physical/Mental Health

 

4)      Family Relationship

 

5)      Professional Improvement

Again, the intent is to improve each category in a positive direction for the entire  year. Also, if a specific goal creates an opportunity to overlap 2 or more categories, even better!

 

What we didn’t want to do was create a situation where we achieved a goal and then say, “whew, I don’t have to do that again!” When you say things like this, there is the potential to reach the goal for purely the goal’s sake! For us, its about overall improvement, not simply achieving the goal.

 

So some time after the holidays, usually late at night, we sit down and start the process. Usually it’s me talking and her tapping out the results on her phone. We ask questions like, “where are we in Spiritual growth?” and we talk about it for a bit. “Where do we want to be at the end of the year? How do we want to get there?” These are the three main questions we ask for each category. Once we get the 1 or 2 goals (we try to not do more than 2 for each category) we print them out and put them on the refrigerator.

 

Anyway, that’s our approach to New Year’s Resolutions and Goals. How about you? What do you do?