Webster’s dictionary defines resolution as an ‘act of determining’, or the intent to do something.
The tradition of making New Year resolutions seems to have come from the ancient Babylonians. At the start of each year they would make promises to their gods that they would return all borrowed objects and pay all debts.
It is 4000 years later and those are still darn good resolutions to make.
I used to have trouble with resolutions. I would make them, then a few weeks later would get distracted by another idea and decide to go for that instead.
I finally figured out that the resolutions I was making were not realistic for me. They would either be something that I just did not have the ability to do, or I would make the end goal too big to be able to reach in one year.
I learned that we need to be very careful when we set goals, we need to make sure the goal is possible for us to reach.
Webster says that a goal is ‘the end to which effort is directed’.
That means that having the intent to do something means nothing unless you direct effort towards it.
A goal will not come to you; you have to go to it. A big goal can feel so far away that you start to feel like you will never reach it.
When you start to feel this way you need to remember that a goal can be broken down into smaller goals that each step you take to the main goal, can be a goal also.
A simple example is cleaning the house. If your goal is to wash all the walls in the house you know you can’t do it all at once. You can do one wall at a time. Each wall cleaned is a step toward the end goal.
The only way we can get anything done or go anywhere in life is to do it step by step.
Sometimes I think we worry about the end goal too much. If we don’t reach that goal as quickly as we think we should, we start to feel like a failure. We forget to celebrate all the small goals we have accomplished.
We need to reward the effort that is directed toward the goal, because if we don’t make the effort the goal will never be reached.
Rewarding our efforts helps us to see how far we have gotten toward the goal, helps us see that reaching that goal is possible.
The one sure way to fail at something is to not take that first step.
I hope all your steps lead to success in 2018.
by Lois Perepelitz
