Have you recovered from the Thanksgiving holiday yet? I haven’t. But it was a special one for me—granddaughter married, a week with my daughter and son-in-law, a fall with the bruises still healing. Phew!
Most of us had family gatherings that were somewhere on the spectrum, from fantastic to flashes of awful. But we are grateful to get together with our families and friends now that Covid Delta is mostly over.
But what are these two months of holidays all about? It is primarily a time to bring family members together in one spot from the far-flung locations where they live. To renew and rebuild relationships.
But now that Thanksgiving is over, it has evolved into the most highly marketed period for buying gifts. If you don’t participate, the advertising industry has deemed you a failure. A scrooge. Far from the original intent of the following holiday Christmas. Give the best gift of all your undivided attention.
We follow this with the last holiday of the season-New Year’s Eve. A time of partying to ring out the old year and ring in the new. A lot is going on during this brief two-month period. But wait, there’s more!
The holiday season is also the two-month season of evaluating/reviewing our year if you are a part of the productivity scene. We are supposed to examine how we did on the goals and new year’s resolutions we set for last year and start setting them for 2022.
How did you do last year?
For New Year’s resolutions, generally, we do terribly. We buy gym memberships thinking we will get healthier. Start regularly going for about a month, then our life takes over, and the resolution to get healthy goes by the wayside.
Five questions to ask yourself before you set a Resolution, Goal or Intention for the New Year.
- Is this goal important to me?
If it isn’t important then why set it and fret about it all year. I t will just lead to unnecessary stress or a sense of failure when you give up. - Is this my goal or one required of me?
If it is your goal you are more likely to do it, with the exception for work-related goals. If someone else suggests that it would be a good goal, I don’t hold out much hope for you. - How do I build the habits I need to reach this goal?
It takes repetition and self-reward to build habits, even if that reward is simply an imaginary high-five. If your goal is o to the gym daily and you have made it for the past thirty days then have to miss one. Don’t quit, just start over. Meeting your goals requires one step and one habit at a time. - Why do I want to do this?
We all need our own why. I can’t envision why a person would run a marathon, compete in an Ironman triathlon, or run in Phoenix in the afternoon heat each summer. But some people have their own why to do these things. Similarly, I try to publish two essays and one newsletter per week. I am approaching 150 so far. Some of you probably think this is as crazy, and maybe so. But I understand my why. - How will I reward myself when I reach my goal?
Reaching each of your goals deserves a reward. Bake a cake. Find a reward that is meaningful to you. This will help you reach each of your other goals.
Since this is the season for setting Goals, Intentions, and New Year’s resolutions, this will be my topic over the following blogs. Enjoy!
“You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change.” — Les Brown.
