The Happy and Prosperous Blog

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I wonder if you are planning on making any New Year’s Resolutions. I certainly am. I have done this for many years and have found it to be a useful practice which helps me refocus on changes I want to make in my life and in myself. I think it can be a useful strategy to adopt towards self-improvement and personal evolution.I’ve put together a few suggestions which I think can help make this process more effective. I hope you find these useful.

Categories

I have found that when I sit down with a blank sheet of paper to think about my resolutions for the coming year it is helpful to have 4 categories

• Mental
• Emotional
• Physical
• Spiritual

This gives me some structure around thinking about my resolutions. You may well find (as I have done) that some resolutions fit into more than one category - which, of course, is fine. I would say that it’s good to have at least one in each area. What do you want to do in 2008 in each of these categories ?

SMART

I used to work in the corporate world at one time and every year we had to set objectives for our team and for ourselves. These objectives had to be SMART. (You may have heard of this technique.) I think this can be applied to resolutions as well. SMART stands for:

• Specific - Make your resolution clear and definite, focussed on what you want to achieve. See this article on being clear and specific.
• Measurable - How will you know when you have completed this resolution ? What will have happened ? I know that this may not apply to some resolutions but worth asking the question, at least, I feel.
• Achievable - Don’t set yourself up to fail - that’s not helpful ! Make sure the resolution you have is possible. This year one of my resolutions was to go to the gym twice a week throughout the year with 5 weeks off for holidays or illness. By giving myself a specific period when I didn’t have to go to the gym, I feel I made the resolution more achievable.
• Relevant - Why are you doing this ? How is this resolution going to contribute to your life ?
• Time-Bound - What’s the time frame for doing this resolution ? Is it something you will do every day/week/month ? Is it something that you will do every day for the next 3 months ?

I would add one more criterion

• Affirmative - Express your resolution in positive language, e.g. I will eat 5 pieces of fruit a day. That’s much better than saying I won’t eat any more than 2 bars of chocolate a week. Don’t say, I will get out of debt this year, better to say, I will be solvent by 1 August 2008. Expressing the negative just reinforces the thing you don’t want. Try focussing on what you want, not on what you don’t want.

If you can write down your resolutions in a way that fits the above criteria, then you should have good solid resolutions that you can work on. And, I do accept that resolutions that fall into the emotional or spiritual category may not be as amenable to this technique as others. Please just think of this SMART(A) technique as a guide !

Conclusion

I think many people are in the habit of (or are at least aware of) setting resolutions every year. However, why do we do this every year ? We could set resolutions for a month or a week or a day. Setting an intention for a day or part of a day is something I find helpful. I have written about intention setting here before.

I hope you have found this of some help as you put together your resolutions. It just remains for me to wish you peace, fun, love and laughter in 2008 - may you have a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

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