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How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

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Write It Down and Live it Out

First of all, I’d like to wish all of you a belated, but heartfelt, happy New Year! I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, I’ve just been covered in work that piled up over Christmas and New Year’s. How in the world does a house get turned inside out over Christmas breaks? Oh, wait, I remember – husbands and kids.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

2008 is getting kind of a bad rap, but it wasn’t all bad. In fact, on a grand scale and on a personal scale, I think it had plenty of wonderful things to say for itself:

  1. History was made in the Presidential election.
  2. Britney Spears fought her demons and won. Success stories always make me smile. Robert Downey, Jr. also saw a comeback of epic proportions.  Two huge movies and another just around the corner.  Welcome back, indeed.
  3. On the personal front, my daughters each met ridiculously wonderful new boyfriends. If they ever slight these boys in any way, my girls know they’ll answer to me!
  4. Again on a personal level – while my cat, Alexa, broke her leg a few months ago, I’m grateful that it wasn’t worse. And I’m positively delighted she’s right back where she belongs – lying on the desk in front of me, looking back whenever the urge for a chin scratch hits her.
  5. The USA rocked, rolled, and rallied in the Summer Olympics.  Michael Phelps amazed all of us, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of him.
  6. What a year for movie fanatics!  We had some great movies to enjoy this year:  Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder, Max Payne, Wanted, Kung Fu Panda, etc.   The Love Guru gave us the chance to say we’d truly seen the worst movie ever. See? There’s something good in everything. My daughter Brittany and I went to the theater to see this one together (I guess the rest of the family knew better?). The two of us had a great time, though, and it had nothing to do with the stinker of a movie.  It was so bad!  Britt and I will always have the bond of having watched the worst movie ever made together.

I know that, financially speaking, 2008 brought more than a few challenges into our lives and I, like you, am hopeful that 2009 will be kinder to our money.

Have you made your New Year’s Resolutions? Come to think of it, how do YOU feel about New Year’s resolutions? In our family of 5, only two of us actually sit down with our little notebooks and pens.  Emily and I live for New Year’s Resolutions! It’s a tradition in our house. We both get such a gleam in our eyes on New Year’s Eve that we can tell what the other’s thinking without a word. Then we whip out our notebooks and burst out with our plans for the year. Change is exciting and we literally get swept away in the moment.

Of course, if we didn’t strive (throughout the year) to meet the goals we set, it’d be just a fun little waste of time. That’s why we use our favorite notebooks to write the resolutions in. They’re right there, staring us in the face each and every day of the year. Notebook Resolutions may not work for everybody, but we firmly believe in them as much as we believe in chocolate. So we won’t be parting with our tradition (or chocolate) any time soon.

I’ve had resolutions in the past that I’ve never even come close to keeping. In fact, I have one that mysteriously shows up year after year: Learn to play the piano. I broke up with tradition this year and left it off of the list. I figured, rightfully so, that if it had ever been THAT important to me, I’d now be able to tickle the ivories a la Alicia Keys.

I think “personal motivation” is the secret to why some resolutions are kept while others are broken. For example, I had goals written on my resolution list last year that pertained to my web publishing business. I did them all. The motivation and “pay off” were important enough to me to do whatever it took to make the goals happen. Playing the piano, while it would be perfectly lovely, just didn’t drive me in the same manner.

One of the best ways to keep a resolution is to ask yourself, “Why is this important to me?”  If you can come up with the WHY, you’ll stand a better chance of coming up with the HOW. You know what a huge fan I am of notebooks and list making, so it won’t surprise you to learn that I write my reasons down. If the reasons are personal enough and if they truly matter, you will find a way to make it happen. The human spirit can’t ever be counted out. We may often look like we don’t have a clue what we’re doing, let alone what we’re going to do next – but, when it comes down to it, we’ll often go as far as we want to go. And we’ll often get whatever we’re willing to fight for.

IF the fight is worth it to us. That’s why weight loss resolutions aren’t often kept. Let’s face it, a chocolate fudge sundae with whipped topping and nuts tastes a heck of a lot better than a 30 minute walk in the park feels. (Do you have any idea what I’d give for a…. never mind.) Taking a 30 minute walk when you’d rather go to Dairy Queen is an ugly battle. But the beautiful thing is, if we win enough of these battles, we win the war!

Success tastes even better than a you know what covered with you know what from you know where.

I wish you and your loved ones a wonderful, healthy, and exciting New Year. I hope it’s full of fun, laughter, and wonderful surprises. I hope you open your world a little wider this year and stretch your wings a little further. You’re capable of doing anything you want to do and of being anyone you want to be. Don’t let anything or anyone (including yourself) get in your way.

 

A Gem from the October 2008 Issue of Success Magazine

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The October 2008 issue of Success Magazine has a mini-article titled “Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise – Your Checklist.” The reader is given 6 small but powerful goals that’ll lead him or her down a path to better health, more wealth, and increased wisdom.

Sign me up for all three.

The first tip is “Add a small fitness goal to your routine each week.” The author suggests drinking one extra glass of water each day, running for one more mile a week, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I think I can swing the extra glass of water each day. But run? Only if I’m giving chase or being chased. As for the stairs, I’m all over that one. I have no great love for elevators, so stairs are fine by me.

My favorite tip of the six is this one: “Don’t use people as mirrors.” The reader is told to have a strong sense of who he/she is without letting other people influence how they feel. This can be a hard one, can’t it?

Some of us are more inclined than others to care too much about what other people think of us. A lot of times, our own opinion of ourselves is heightened or lessened by someone else’s words. We can be feeling pretty pleased with ourselves or with a particular accomplishment until someone criticizes us. Then we basically bottom out.

As the article points out, we should try very hard to keep a healthy sense of self, without allowing others to affect it. After all, there are some people who can only make themselves feel bigger by making others feel smaller. After years of practice, they’ve perfected the art.

The advice is positively golden – and the more I think about it, the more golden it is.

All 6 of the tips are golden. I’ve given away two of them, if you want the other 4, grab the issue! The issue’s packed with great stuff – including the last page: “Turning Knowledge into Power, 10 Actions You Can Take Right Now.”

You can find a lot more wonderful tips, hacks, and self improvement advice on Success Magazine‘s website.

~ Joi

Surprising Source of Motivation

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Leo the Lion

I can’t say that I totally believe in astrology – but I don’t let a day go by without reading my horoscope.

Before I go any further, I want to say that there are aspects to astrology that I do believe in, I just don’t personally think the stars hold our destiny.  That responsibility is ours.

That said, I love reading horoscopes like some people love reading comics!  They’re always entertaining and, every now and again, they’re downright motivation. Some of the best advice, inspiration, and motivation lies within these daily postings.

I guess you could say that I believe in their potency but not their prophecy.

Take, for example, part of my horoscope for today:  Someone may be prodding you to take action today, dear Leo. It may be best if you beat them to it and just motivate yourself.  I love it when my daily horoscope gives me a mini lecture.  This is one I needed, too.  I tend to be far too laid back – I got that from my dad, along with low blood pressure, outrageous allergies, a tendency to get  a sunburn – even in the shade, a green thumb, mad cooking skills, and a WILD addiction to coffee.

I try to work on this particular area because it irritates me  (the overly laid back bit, I embrace the coffee addiction). I just don’t seem capable of taking enough initiatives in life – I let far too many things just float by and then I wonder, “Why didn’t I do this…” or “Why didn’t I do that….”

Of course, being laid back has it’s perks. Again, like my dad, it takes a lot to make me mad. In a world where people get furious over having to stand in line for 5 minutes, it’s kind of cool to keep your cool.

It’s as though everyone’s psyche has its own persona.  Mine?  She’s somewhere between a beachcomber, a coffee-shop beatnik, and a Bohemian flower child.  I’m the one that if someone short-changes them a dollar, let’s it go and figures that life keeps score and I’ll find one down the road somewhere.

Anyway, for some reason, reading this horoscope today has given me new determination to try and become more self-motivated – to sort of “take it” to life rather than letting life “take it” to me.

I certainly wouldn’t have opened up those avenues of thought on my own.  My daily horoscope does that just about every day – gives me food for thought with a side order of motivation. Most of the time it’s just what I ordered, and sometimes (like today) it’s so good I hadn’t even had the sense TO order it.

Free advice and motivation?  Hard to beat.

 

How to Attract What You Want in Your Life

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"One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it."  ~ Sidney Howard
“One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.”  ~ Sidney Howard
As a Self Help diva, I’ve been thinking about the quote above all day.  Literally, the quote has been echoing in my mind since coffee cup number 1. There’s a great deal of truth in the words – truth that I’d never really thought of before.  If we want something that we don’t currently have, the odds are pretty good that we’ll have to give something up to get it.  Self improvement and self help are all about balance, after all.

  • If we want to lose weight, certain foods are going to have to get the kiss off.
  • If we want fitness, we have to give up a little (or a lot) couch time and internet surfing.
  • If we want more hours in the day, there are probably specific time-wasters we’ll have to send packing.
  • If we want to be more organized, clutter has to go.  Yeah, I know, I felt that one, too.
  • If we want better, deeper relationships, we have to abandon the concept of being out for number one.

Whatever it is we DON’T HAVE is missing for a reason.  And if we keep motoring along, as is, we’ll never have it.  After all, if we we’re drawing it to us with our present actions, wouldn’t we have it?

Around coffee cup #4, I sat myself down and had a little self help Q & A.  I brought up certain things in my life that I wish were a little different.  Let’s not get into the fact that my arms don’t remotely resemble Halle Berry’s (seriously, what does the woman do?).

I’ll get depressed if I think about my arms, so we’ll use time management as an example. It’s a pretty universal dilemma.  I, like most people, always find myself wishing I had more time.

I work at home, full time, as a web publisher. At any given time, I have between 14 and 20 websites/blogs that I write for, maintain, tweak, publicize, etc.  Now do you understand the coffee addiction?  

The number of times I draw up a daily schedule – only to have to draw up a new one is staggering. And depressing.  I recently sat down with pen and paper (along with the “regulars,” a cat nearby and a bottomless cup of coffee) and took myself to task. I realized that, like most people, I’d fallen into the trap of thinking that MORE was synonymous with BETTER.

If 5 websites are good, then 10 are better. Right?

Not so much.

I’ve realized after quite a few years (and even more crumpled up schedules scratched out on printer paper) that more isn’t always better. Sometimes LESS is actually better because then you have more of yourself to go around.  No one… and I mean no one… is at their absolute best when they’re spread out as thin as a layer of mayo on a ham sandwich.

Sometimes something has to give – no matter what area of life we’re talking about.  Truth is, sometimes its exit is what sets the stage for something better’s grand entrance.

If anything is in your way, the sooner you get rid of it – the sooner something better can come along.  Spend a little time thinking about the quote above and see what your subconscious comes up with.

It just may be the thing to open up a whole new world!