New Years Resolutions an Annual Tradition

January 1st its a new day, its a new year, its time to make resolutions for the coming year. But first, it might be a good idea to do an assessment of the last year. Make a list of accomplishments, places you visited, people you met, goals you had, etc. Now that you can see what you did last year, use that information to come up with some resolutions for this year. A disheartening statistic is that only eight percent of the New Years Resolutions that are made are actually followed through to fruition. Todays blog will focus on some tips to follow so you are in that eight percent. - Write it down! According to Dustin Wax, a Lifehack editor writing about Writing and Remembering, When we write something down, research suggests that as far as our brain is concerned, its as if we were doing that thing. Writing seems to act as a kind of mini-rehearsal for doing. Ive written before about how visualizing doing something can trick the brain into thinking its actually doing it, and writing something down seems to use enough of the brain to trigger this effect. - Make an action plan. Divide your resolution or goal into doable actions that can be completed a task at a time. The old adage of eating an elephant one bite at a time holds true when we are working on accomplishing goals. What can you do today toward your New Years Resolution, and tomorrow and the next day. - Be flexible with your goals and tasks. Periodically review to see if you are on track. If you are not, take a look at why, and determine whether or not you need to revise your goal,, scrap it, or simply change the way you are trying to accomplish it. - Be accountable to someone about making progress on your goal. At work or at school, we have a lot of accountability built into our daily schedules. But with personal goals, we dont, so ask a friend to help you be accountable for accomplishing your goal. A simple weekly or monthly, Are you on track with your goals? text or email may be sufficient to keep you on task. And next year, when you are looking back on the year, you can be one of the elite, one of the eight percent of people who completed a New Years Resolution. Please comment on the Liv Northgate, Gilbert Blog and share what your New Years Resolutions are this year.