Compass

The Right Direction

 

New Year’s resolutions are famously short lived, lasting only a few days or a few weeks.
Rather than totally give up on resolutions, use smart strategies to build your confidence.
The beginning of a new year just feels like the right time to make changes and start
going in the right direction.

I’ll post one important strategy each day over the first 5 days of 2012 to help you be
successful with your resolutions and build your self-confidence. Come back tomorrow
for the second strategy.

Make it doable. Be honest with yourself and make the change a small step that is doable for you. Forget the experts. Disregard what other think of you. Just do something small each day.

Better to resolve to walk for exercise for 15 minutes 3 times a week, than to decide that you are going to exercise for an hour at the gym 5 days a week. In 6 weeks when you have kept your resolution, you can increase the time by 5 minutes to maintain your success. Truth is that you won’t be able to continue going for 5 hours a week for very long.

You can apply this principle to any New Year’s resolution. Keep the steps small so they fit into your lifestyle. Increase the change – time, duration, amount, etc – in small increments to build confidence.

If you have decided to tackle your habit of procrastination, don’t think you can do a sweeping change throughout your life. Choose one, small area of your life where you put things off and then get very specific about how you are going to take action in that specific area.

 

© Lynn Kennedy Baxter, BSN, MA, LMFT          www.BeConfidentToday.com

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