I waited to write this after being into the New Year for a few days because most of us are in “recovery” from the stresses and strains of the previous Holiday season. It can feel overwhelming and painful to think about resolutions when we are still feeling pressed to pay for gifts we gave or still feeling the sting of something said by someone we love. Even if the Holiday season was as wonderful and as happy as we hoped it would be, celebrating can be hard work for many of us because of shopping and food preparation or balancing fun with work. Succeeding with our resolutions doesn’t have to be hard or strenuous. In fact the easier we make it for ourselves the more likely we will have success!
The New Year always brings with it conversations about new resolutions. We want to do more of something, less of something, or do something better or something altogether new. We want to move forward in some area in our lives. So how do we succeed without fail with our resolutions and our plans? The best way to succeed with any goal or plan is to break the resolution into tiny bite size pieces. If our goal is to loose weight then let’s plan to eliminate sugar OR white flour for one day a week. If that feels too hard then let’s do it for one meal on one day. If our goal is to de-clutter our home then let’s plan to focus on this for 30 minutes at a time. If our goal is to learn a new skill then let’s plan to try something new for one afternoon or evening. If we start small we arrange for ourselves to succeed. When we take a small step that we know we can successfully accomplish we find that we have more confidence in our ability to take another small step and repeat that until we have more confidence again. Building on small and successful steps leads to accomplishing big or ultimate goals with more ease. Failure often occurs because we have set ourselves up to fail. We ask ourselves to make large and sweeping changes that are difficult to maintain because we aren’t acclimated to a new behavior and a new way of seeing ourselves as capable change agents in our lives. The most essential ingredient for success in any endeavor is to apply copious amounts of gentlelovingkindness to ourselves and our process. There is no better way to be gentle, loving and kind than to make change easy and manageable and setting ourselves up to succeed!