"A goal without a plan is just a wish" -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
It's the time of year when we all make resolutions to make changes in our life. This is a good thing. The problem, however, is that many of us fail to make a concrete plan about how to keep our resolutions.
What is the best way to keep your New Year's Resolutions about social anxiety?
The book, "Give it Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less" by Mary Carlomagno details the author's journey of giving up luxuries over the course of a year. Her plan was simple: tackle one change each month. This type of plan can also be useful in keeping New Year's resolutions.
Instead of making ten resolutions on January 1st, and letting them all slide by the middle of the month, why not choose small, actionable goals for each coming month? The goal for each month should be something small that you can practice each day. By the end of the month, you should find the new behavior becoming a habit.
What would this look like in practice?
To get you started, I've made a list of practical habits that you can establish from now until the end of June. You can decide on specific goals for the remainder of the year.
- January: Practice daily gratitude
- February: Practice relaxation exercises daily
- March: Cut out caffeine for a month
- April: Start a conversation with a stranger every day for a month
- May: Accept invitations for a month
- June: Be assertive every day for a month
The goal here is to do the least you can do. Baby steps get on the bus. Although it may seem like you are only making small changes at first, over the course of a year you will have introduced 12 positive new habits!
What do you think? Will you try this plan for 2011? What new habits will you introduce?
Do you have other New Year's resolutions related to your health? This post is part of the About.com Health Channel's blog carnival on New Year's Resolutions, hosted by Stress Guide Elizabeth Scott. This is a great chance to learn how to make changes in all areas of your life.
Further Reading:
- New Year's Resolutions for Social Anxiety
- What Are Your Resolutions for 2011?
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This is a helpful way to keep your resolutions, so often we bite off more than we can chew in January, only to crash and burn in just a few days or weeks. The lessons that I talk about in my first book, Give it Up!My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less which you mention (thank you!) have stayed with me for life. It is all about baby steps!
I’m planning on doing exactly this this year! This month I’m trying exercising every day – it’s day three now and I’ve kept it up so far
I really like your idea of accepting invitations for a month so I might give that a go in February.
A very useful guide. A problem many people have with new years resolutions is they either attempt too big a change, or too many changes all at once. These are unsustainable in the long term. Failing to achieve them then lowers you confidence and simply confirms the belief that you can’t change or that change is hard. Big goals need to be broken down into many little easily achievable steps. An advantage of this is that each step that you achieve builds your confidence further. Building your belief that you can overcome it.
New years resolutions can really help to gain control of your life again, it just feels like a new fresh year is the time to start addressing things and improving ourselves.