Being Resolute in 2015

It’s the 21st day of 2015…how are you doing? If you made resolutions for the New Year, how are they fairing? Did you know that more Americans make New Year’s resolutions each year than watch the Super Bowl? According to Forbes.com, 40% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions while just one-third of us watch the Super Bowl. While the number of us that take the time to evaluate the last year and head into the next with specific goals is fairly high, only a staggering 8% of us will actually follow through with those resolutions. However, just because we may not always see these plans through does not mean that they’re not important to us. It just means that we have a few obstacles in the way of our desires.

But the beauty of desire is that it lives within us and won’t ever leave us alone.

As poet Nayyirah Waheed beautifully wrote:

“Desire is the kind of thing that
eats you
and
leaves you starving.”

If you’re anything like the friends I had dinner with on New Years Eve, you felt a little indifferent about 2014.  We saw some significant accomplishments (Malala Yousafzai winning the Nobel Prize – continuing to inspire the world with her courage and grace and reminding us that we can do absolutely anything we put our minds to). We also experienced some moments of true fear and uncertainty about the state of the world (ISIS threats). Whatever the status of world-peace may be, hopefully we made some personal progress, big or small, and are at least no further from our dreams today then we were a year ago.

Everything considered, I think we are all excited to see what 2015 has in store. Our resolutions have been off the press for about three weeks and we’re in that vital make-or-break stage. If we haven’t already taken the steps necessary to incorporate new habits into our daily routines, we are at risk of losing sight of them until next year. We can’t let that happen! Let’s talk about some simple tips that will increase our chances of success.

First off, I’m going to put some of my personal resolutions out there for the world to see. Doing so helps those who are important to me see them and clues them in on where I see myself going. It’s the first step in creating a support system and also tells the universe that you’re serious about these goals and need all the help you can get to make them a reality.

• Learn video-editing

• Start video-blogging and blog more as a whole

• Get started learning Spanish

• Stretch daily

• Drink less coffee and more tea

• Juice daily

• Make more money

• Put more of what I make towards getting out of debt

• Write letters to people

• Build something out of wood

Physically writing down your resolutions not only helps you remember them, but it also provides you with something tangible to look at and motivate yourself with. It is the first step in bringing your goals to life. Seeing them written down makes them feel more real and therefore more obtainable.

Obviously we have our lives to live and we can’t just drop everything and tackle all of these things immediately. We need a plan. There’s a great tool for helping to manage and pay off debt whose fundamental structure can be used to organize and prioritize all our goals as a bigger picture. It’s kind of like a goal snowball. If we start with our smallest goals and focus just on achieving those, the feeling of accomplishment we get from that success will inspire us to go for the next goal. In terms of debt, this takes the form of paying off the smallest debts first (even if they have higher interest rates) because as you pay toward them, you see them getting smaller much quicker than the bigger ones would and before you know it you’ve gotten rid of one. The feeling is so great that you are inspired to move on to the next one. You’re so much more likely to stick with it and in the long run save yourself time and money with this approach.

So write down your goals, look them over and choose the one that will be the easiest to accomplish. If you didn’t write anything easy down, spend some more time thinking until you find something that you can do easily to improve your life. It may seem counterintuitive to add potentially unrelated goals to your list for the purpose of accomplishing your other goals but trust me: as I said, you can use the inspiration and confidence from these small accomplishments to push you strongly into your larger goals. But don’t forget to write them down! Crossing them off the list is half the fun.

Believe in yourself and in the durability of willpower.

“What you get by achieving your goals
is not nearly as important
as what you become
by achieving your goals.”
-Henry David Thoreau