This is the time of year where we all take a personal inventory and decide what things we want to change moving forward. As we all know, the odds of us actually following through with any of these throughout the year is about the same as everyone in America feeling good about our solution to the fiscal cliff. While we could debate the merits of resolutions, I do think there is merit in targeting one area in your life where you’d like to intentionally focus on seeing results.
My “resolution” for 2013 is to wake up earlier each day. I’ve always considered myself a night owl but I’d love to start changing that. I read a great article about it and here are a few things I’m going to intentionally do this year:
- Go to sleep earlier. It isn’t uncommon for me to go to bed at midnight or later (after all, that’s when I get my “second wind.”) I’m going to aim for 11pm bedtime and then start moving that up as I’m able to adjust.
- One of the things that the article mentioned was to turn on all the lights in the room. I doubt Michelle would be very responsive to that idea. However, I will certainly crank up all the bathroom lights and jolt myself to rise as I’m able.
- Try to create a mini-habit out of it. Like I’ve blogged about before, I’ll certainly be using my Lift app on my phone to track my daily disciplines.
Instead of viewing your resolution as either a success or failure, view it instead as progress. When your only options are success or failure than it is easy to give up and allow your goal to fail. When progress is the goal, you focus on what you can do daily or weekly (especially when you use the Lift app!). Write out your own list of action steps on how you could make progress on something you’d like to see happen. Think of how much time you have this year to be more intentional!
Question: What is something you’d like to improve for 2013?
My 2013 resolutions ( yes, more than 1) is to be more patient with my kids, to cook more, and to remain healthy by keeping with my Paleo diet. I think maybe if i woke up early also I would be more patient with my kids as the morning would offer me some alone time to set goals for my day and thus more prepared for the littles when thry wake up!
Ambitious! Thanks Stacy!
Jeremy,
To answer the question posed by the title of this post, No. I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I believe that if you really want to do something different or improve in an area of your life, you’ll just do (or should). You shouldn’t need a yearly reminder to examine yourself. This should happen as an ongoing process through out the year. At a holiday party, someone told me for his new year’s resolution he is going to quit smoking (he said this as he took a puff). My response was why wait for some day in the future? If you really want to quit, do it now.
I think new year’s resolutions play into procrastination. Therefore personally being a type- A driven personality, I am constantly evaluating where I am, and where I want to be and adjusting daily. For example did you know when we send a rocket to the moon it is OFF course 97% of the time? It is constantly correcting and I think we should choose this over some once a year guilt trip called new years resolutions.
When did New Year’s Resolutions hurt you Dan?
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions but this year I did decide to read my wife’s 1 Year Chronological Bible. I was actually inspired to do it after reading your recent post about how you change up reading the bible each year with a different translation/reading plan, so thank you for the great idea!