Resolutely Resolve to Make Meaningful Resolutions for 2008

Up until the past ten years or so I would make resolutions for the new year. Usually it was the same resolutions that I hadn’t followed the previous year, such as:

• Lose weight
• Get healthier
• et my home organized
• Find a better job
• Start a savings plan
• Make better use of my time
• Spend more time with family and friends
• Spend less time on the computer

All of these are fantastic resolutions to make. Who doesn’t want to be healthier? Be better organized? Use time wisely?

Year after year I’d jot all this down on paper, anticipating success, and then, on January 2nd of the new year, I’d resolve (on some subconscious level) not to work at any of my resolutions. Within six months of making them, I’d find my written notes in a crumpled paper ball within the “dust bunny zone” under my bed. By then, the resolutions had long been discarded in my mind, and the paper ball would be tossed into the garbage.

Maybe next year…

The reality is that many people do the same thing. Year in, year out, they resolve, and then forget. They may start, and make it into the new year with their new resolutions in action. But something happens, and more penciled-in dreams on small sheets of paper become filler for the trash can.

Why doesn’t making resolutions work? What happens from the seed of crafting a resolution in your mind to the almost wholesale self-sabotage of the actual effort towards actually growing and achieving it?

There are, of course, a host of easy answers. I just got lazy. I just became too busy. I have to put it off until another time, the time isn’t right. We’ve all made and heard these excuses ourselves.

If we look truthfully at our resolutions (short- and long-term goals), it’s not these reasons that held us back from their successful completion. It’s the by-product of the possibility that we have been asking ourselves the wrong questions about our deepest desires and goals. We set our goals too high, enabling us to never have to achieve them, or too low, keeping us from doing things that would really fill us with a sense of happiness and accomplishment.

If you’re planning on making resolutions for 2008, consider the following questions as you contemplate your options:

1. Will the accomplishment of this goal make me happy? Is it something I’ve always wanted for myself, or is it something others want me to do?
2. Is this goal a short term goal or one that will affect the rest of my life?
3. Does the goal match up with who I am? Am I willing to change my essential values to accomplish it?
4. Is the goal realistic?
5. If the goal might take more than a year to accomplish, am I willing to break it down into smaller, achievable goals and work towards it anyway?

There are, of course, many other questions that you can and should ask yourself before setting goals. Please share yours in the your comments!

In the meantime, remember that goal setting is an important part of planning and achieving your dreams, whatever they are. Being honest with yourself about what you deeply want or don’t want in your life will make a huge difference in your likelihood of success.