This Year I Will Do More Of What Makes Me Happy. A New Years Resolution Lost.
What's in a new year?
I know we all have our New Years resolutions that we all start to list out for the change we want in our lives. Like my title of this hub says " This year I'm going to do what makes me happy." Almost everyone I have ever met has done a New Years resolution. Some of us are looking for a fresh start for the new year. We get 12 months to go in uncharted territory. To move forward and hopefully make it till the next year without dying. A new year resembles hope that we will make tomorrow a better one. But what if I told you that you don't have to wait till tomorrow. Or better yet why wait till a new year to make any change you should have done long ago in your life? Creatures of habit possibly? But something about a new year makes you want to try a little harder to make that change doesn't it? I want to dig and see what we can do to make the changes come a little more often than New Years. So instead of you making a New Years resolution at the end of the year you now have a check list with all the things you had accomplished for the year.
Lets look at why we put things off.
So why do some of us put things off till it's almost too late? I know for me a lot of it is we just don't have the time to get things done. Or do we have the time and just don't use our time wisely? Is it a time management type skill most of us didn't acquire growing up? I remember waking up watching P90X tv ad spots with Tony Horton saying something like just do an hour a day. And a lot of times that's what we need is just that hour out of the day. What if you don't have that hour a day? Well just do 10 minutes to getting your goals accomplished. What's funny is that a few years later P90X make like a 10 minute type work out DVD. It just shows that they too knew that people don't always have an hour to commit to working out when bills need to be paid.
Old advice.
That isn't the first time I heard just do 10 minutes a day of a certain goal you have listed. A long time ago I had heard that advice on keeping your house clean. Not sure if I read it in some book or if it was in some self-help book I read. But the advice was simple. Cause what typically happens is you get overwhelmed if you try and tackle everything at once. This way doing just 10 minutes is better than you getting discouraged and quitting your task all together.
Writing your goals and achieving them!
Most of us will sit down and write out our goals before the new year and stop there. A lot of times we make a goal and most of the time bite off more than we can chew. This usually kills any fire you had to achieve your goal and become discouraged from even attempting your goal. Lets take a look at a few examples on how to break down some of your goals so they are not so discouraging to you.
Making achievable goals.
I am guilty to of making unrealistic goals. Don''t get me wrong it's okay to have a couple unrealistic goals but don't make your whole list full of them. Here is an example of my goal list that is before and after.
Goals list 2016
- Read more
- Do more photography
- Draw more
- Go to the gym
We will now step back and look at what I wrote for goals and examine them for a moment. The way I wrote this goals list is how I use to write them before. I'll take the first goal and break it down to a more achievable goal.
Read more - What is wrong with this goal? Pretty straight forward right? For starters it is not specific enough to really be a goal. Some people would say "Well I read Facebook does that count?" Let's break down this 'read more' to be a little more productive. For me my goal is to read more books in the end and gain knowledge and entertainment. So now what I have is a little bit of a path I can go down. So instead of having 'Read More' I now will have 'Read a book a day'. This gives me a better idea of what to prepare for in achieving this goal. I love to read and sometimes just forget to make time to allow for it. Things I have done to prepare me to achieve this goal is to use my resources to make it easier. For starters I made Kindle one of my main apps on my phone to access my digital books. I started using my local library to get more books to read. My library allows for online book check outs. So now I can use my kindle to check out books from the library. These are a few examples of how I try and make it easier to achieve this goal. The other thing you can do to break down this goal is make your goal more specific. If you find that reading out of a book a day make your goal to be more like 'Read 5 pages out of a book a day'. 5 pages a day would keep me from being discouraged and quitting my goal.
Do more photography - This goal of mine is a fun one for me. But for me to get better at photography I need to keep shooting pictures. So what I would do here is similar to what I did with my 'Read more' goal. I will change this goal to say ' Take at least one picture a day' instead. This goal is something I can now do and not feel like I need to do a 100 photos in a day. This keeps me with a simple goal to start off with. But what's good about doing goals like this is that it inspires you to sometimes take more than one. It's just that little push that we need to get our momentum moving forward.
Draw more - This goal is something I love to do but find that I run out of time at the end of the day. So instead I will commit just 5 minutes of my life to add anything to my sketch books. So what I would write this goal to read ' Draw at least 5 minutes a day'. So now I don't feel I have to finish some type of master piece when I read this goal. See a pattern here now with how I'm revising my goals? Almost simplifying them so they are not as scary when you look them over.
Go to the gym - This is something I touched on in an earlier paragraph. About just doing a few minutes a day of working out. This was my goal a few years ago and I pretty much moved this goal to be more like 'Work out 3 times a week at the gym'. And going to the gym for me is usually about 30 minutes of hard working out. That evolved from doing 5 to 10 minutes a day.
Before and after goals list.
Goals list 2016
- Read more
- Do more photography
- Draw more
- Go to the gym
Revised Goals list 2016
- Read 5 pages a day
- Take at least 1 picture a day
- Draw at least 5 minutes a day
- Work out 3 times a week at the gym
Conclusion
I hope this year you take time make your own goals and to look forward to a better future. It may feel like a slow process and that it isn't going anywhere. But over time if you stick with doing your goals daily you will get there. Making reasonable goals like I mentioned above will help you get there little by little. So don't give up doing what makes you happy and doing what you love. Remember you don't have to wait till it's a new year to do your goals either. You can start a goals list of what makes you happy today! Let me know if this was helpful to you in the comments below.
