Friday, January 9, 2009

New year Resolutions?

Are you currently working on some hot, freshly brewed, sweet and tasty un-broken New Year resolutions? Imagine those are the resolutions you had made and suppose that you have achieved all of them. Think how cool life would be :) I am sure life would always be a bed of roses. It would be like you have acquired a special God Particle which enables to act as God as well as Human. This means that you can do anything and everything possible, physically at least. Unfortunately this is not the case with most of us. I take the liberty in using the word "Most" because survey by leading Universities and researchers says that 4/5 people who take resolutions never keep them even till the end of January. By Feb, most of the resolutions are doomed.

Sometimes the very resolutions act as counterproductive. It increases those activities which we had initially wanted to quit. But isn't it a silly thing to wait till December to fix your resolutions? If you want fix them in March or July ? Hmm... I really don't understand why one needs to tie it to a specific date to pursue what one needs to do.

Ok. Now coming on how to effectively keep a resolution. Something that has worked wonders for me. Ahem,Ahem, with the word "worked" by now u might have guessed that i am lying. Indeed you are right. I have never been successful in keeping resolutions, New year or otherwise. So taking my advice is a sure recipe for disaster :). I am going to present you what researchers have concluded on how to go about a resolution. I read a lot of articles about resolutions and invariably everyone has the same thing to say. This is what University of Washington has to suggest.

• Have a strong initial commitment to make a change.
• Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up.
• Keep track of your progress. The more monitoring you do and feedback you get, the better you will do.

And a sure shot recipe for Failure includes

• Not thinking about making resolutions until the last minute.
• Reacting on a specific day and making your resolutions based on what's bothering you or is on your mind at that time.
• Framing your resolutions as absolutes by saying, "I will never do X again."

Stephen Covey, the famous author says those things which we want to change must align with the deepest values , motivations and with what is important to us. Otherwise there will not be any passion to stay committed when the going gets tough. This is especially true because we get distracted easily by a lot of things which acts against us in achieving what we want.

Some other points that is mentioned is

Don't set yourself up for failure with unrealistic goals

Make sure each goal includes clear measurement and specific deadlines

Write down the goals and review them. This increases the chances of achieving them.

Track your progress and reward yourself.

If you slip up, Recommit

Ohh...writing this seemed to be an herculean task for me. Following this would be next to impossible :) Remember what ever given above , I bet next time you will be scared & think twice before making one . :) Let me go out and get myself some fresh air while you start preparing your next list of resolutions :)

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