Set Goals Not Resolutions

It’s that time of year again.  Time to start your New Year’s resolutions and after the first of the year, if you are like me, you will have already given up on keeping your resolutions.  Why do we fail keeping our resolutions?  Making a promise without a plan or accountability is worthless.

Setting Goals

Think about all of the things that you want to accomplish in the next 12 months.  I recommend that you select 10 reasonable goals. The operative word is reasonable.  If one of your goals is to scale Mount Everest but you have never climbed a mountain and haven’t been training to do so, that’s probably not reasonable.

Write your goals down.  This will help you remember what your goals are and keep track of your progress achieving them.  To make your goals attainable, you need to create a timeline for each of them.  I wouldn’t make the deadline for all of your goals to all be accomplished the end of the year.  Schedule them throughout the year so you can celebrate each of your goals that are achieved.

Obstacles

It’s also important to identify the obstacles that could get in your way to achieve each of your goals.  There are always obstacles.  If there weren’t, all of our goals would be easily met.  Identify anything that is going to get in your way and plan to overcome those obstacles.

Assistance

 Often goals cannot be achieved on your own.  Most of my goals require help from colleagues, friends and family.  For each of your goals, make sure that you list everyone who you will need to help you.

Skills and Abilities

Sometimes we are aggressive with our goal setting, but haven’t completely determined if we have the appropriate skills and abilities to achieve those goals.  Research what you need to do to acquire those skills and abilities and do it.

Make Your Goals into an Actionable Plan

Once you have put your list of goals together with a timeline for each one, identified your obstacles, added the people who can help you, and received the skills and abilities to accomplish those goals, you can create and execute your plan.

The only New Year’s resolution that should be made this year is to never do New Year’s resolutions anymore.  Set reasonable, attainable goals and develop an action plan to complete them.

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Photo credit: jazzlog / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Your Holiday Survival Guide

It’s that time of year again.  Before the Halloween decorations were taken down at the stores, the Christmas trees were already up.  Rock music stations were already switching their music to holiday music on November 1st.  It seems that retailers want you to get in the buying mood earlier and earlier every year.  Commercialism is everywhere just as Charlie Brown described almost 50 years ago in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.  Bob Rivers released a funny song called the “Twelve Pains of Christmas” several years ago that sums up how some people feel about the holidays.

Here are my top 10 recommendations of how you can survive the holidays.

1. Make sure you tell your parents, in-laws, grandparents or whoever prepares the Christmas dinner in your house that it’s delicious. Even if the turkey is left-over from Thanksgiving, the lasagna is overcooked and the mashed potatoes look like the cottage cheese.  They worked very hard on the meal.  I recommend that you tell them early in the meal or you will get KP duty and will be doing the dishes long after Uncle Joe and Aunt Audrey have gone to bed.
2. Don’t mess with tradition. If you do certain things every year, regardless of how redundant it seems, keep doing them.  One year we decided to change the Christmas menu from ham and lasagna to boiled fish.  We barely survived the meal.  Needless to say the old tradition returned and thankfully without bloodshed toward the family member who suggested changing the tradition that year.
3. When you get a fruitcake, look at it as a piece of history. It’s probably been around a lot longer than you have.  Graciously accept it, re-wrap it and send it on to the next victim.
4. Don’t get stressed over sending Christmas cards. Some families send 10-page letters updating you on Baby Sally’s first dirty diaper. I always enjoy receiving Christmas cards from people I don’t even know.  I think some people send Christmas cards to random people just to mess with them.  I like the JibJab online Christmas cards.  They are funny and easy to send.  It gives you more time to stress out about something else.
5. Listen to Christmas music and let it take you back to your childhood. When I was growing up, we had several albums (for anyone under 30, you call them “vinyls”) that we listened to every year.  There was a great collection of Christmas music that you could purchase from your local Firestone store.  I really like Volume 3.  Hopefully, the music can take you back to less stressful times.  In my opinion, they don’t make Christmas albums like this anymore.
6. Bake Christmas goodies. Nothing smells better than freshly baked Christmas cookies, pies and cakes.  My mom used to make poppy seed and nut rolls and pineapple icebox cake.  I can still smell and taste those delicious treats.  Baked goods seem to put everyone in a good mood.  Every year, we bake a birthday cake for Jesus.  No we don’t put over 2,000 candles on the cake.  It’s against fire regulations in most states.  Since it is Jesus’ birthday we are celebrating, we like to remember Him.  It helps keep things in perspective for the holidays.
7. For those who live in snowy areas, enjoy the beauty. Go ride a horse-drawn sleigh and drink some hot chocolate. Forget that it’s 40 below zero and you won’t see spring flowers until August.  Last year, I was in West Michigan where we had seven foot snow drifts.  That’s a dusting if you live in Buffalo.  For those in warm places like Florida, feel sorry for everyone else who is shoveling and salting their driveways every 15 minutes.
8. Go “clipping” on Christmas Eve. Clipping is the art of gently nudging another person’s shopping cart and making it look like it was an accident or better yet, go unnoticed.  The more carts you clip, the more points you get.  If it’s obvious to the victim or your competition, you lose points. Let’s face it, the people who are shopping on Christmas Eve aren’t very organized.  Their stress level is through the roof along with all of the other last minute shoppers. People are out there like Arnold Schwarzenegger was in “Jingle All The Way.” There are some people out there more stressed than you are.  My siblings and I used to purposely go out clipping on Christmas Eve, and then we would go into a store separately, act like we didn’t know each other and start fighting over the same item.  It was wildly entertaining to all of the other stressed out people in the store.
9. Don’t fight over the bathroom. When you have 30 relatives staying with you including Uncle Frank who has irritable bowl syndrome all from 6 different families fighting over the one bathroom with questionable plumbing, relax.  There are 24-hour stores all over the place with bathrooms.  It will give you an excuse to escape the chaos for an hour or so.  All of this will pass.  No pun intended.
10. Go to a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day church service. I went to a Jesuit high school and we used to have the most beautiful midnight mass services on Christmas Eve.  This candlelight service was very peaceful.  At midnight, we would blow the candles out and they would have several trumpets play “Joy to the World”.  Just make sure you don’t eat too much Christmas Eve or you’ll end up snoring during the candlelight service.  Not good.  We would come home and watch the Pope saying midnight mass and have cooked kielbasa after the mass.  Don’t ask me why, but it was another tradition we just didn’t mess with.  I’m sure you have some unique traditions in your family.  Remember point number 2, don’t mess with tradition.

This time of year is supposed to focus on the birth of Christ, giving and sharing.  It’s a time for family and friends, warm thoughts and warm hearts.  When the chaos, family disagreements and stress of the holidays starts to get you down, take a deep breath, smile a lot and enjoy the holidays for what they were intended to be.