Time to Start a New Leave & Make Promises You Can Keep

Today is January 1, 2020 and many people are making New Year’s Resolutions. For some those resolutions are personal, professional or both. Another word for resolution is goal.

In the movie National Treasure, Nicholas Cage in one scene talked about the word “resolve.” Merriam-Webster online dictionary in its second definition of the word “resolve” stated “to make a definite and serious decision to do something.”

How many people make a definite and serious decision to do something? I truly believe not many. This is why many New Year’s Resolutions fail because the decision is not definite (think specific) and there is no articulation as to the actions to do something (think written WAY SMART goals with action steps).

As in the New Year’s Resolution lyrics by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, they understood a promise must be made. This promise could be to someone else or more importantly a promise to one’s self.

How do you feel when you break a promise to yourself? Probably if you are a person of integrity, you have a feelings of failure, of regret and carry the remnants of that that broken promise (guilt) for days to come.

So many may think as the New Year comes again they will “never, never do it again, no, no, no” make another resolution. How sad.

When we remember we have control over our own actions, that belief frees us from focusing on controlling the actions of others. Sometimes we can influence the actions of others, yet when we focus on controlling our own actions we have far greater success.

For me having both professional and personal written action planss with WAY SMART goals is the best way to achieve my goals or resolutions. The New Year is a time to reflect what worked well during the previous year, what could have worked better and how can I make the forthcoming year better. My goal is not to focus on my failures. Instead, I resolve to connect my failures to steps of forward progress or as John Maxwell wrote inhis book Failing Forward.

P.S. Yes the word leave was intentional. 

Graphics Courtesy of Pixabay.com