Resolutions or firm decisions – the choice is yours By Ruth Lloyd Williams

Big Ben chimes midnight, we’ll link arms, “we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet and sing Auld Lang Syne”

Then in the morning as the new year dawns we all get our party knickers in a twist and we repeat the annual resolution setting process spurred on by the media marketing gurus peddling the promises of instant results- what could possibly go wrong?

It appears that masochistically we feel the need to put ourselves under immense pressure with our list of New Year’s must do’s, which realistically for the majority of us is just a way of planning to fail.

New Year Resolutions

We start by making the goals unobtainable, the mountains too big to climb, the time spans to short.  And then we go into battle, having not armed ourselves with the support, tools or weapons we need to have to even have a fighting chance of winning this year’s war.

There is the annual regurgitating desire to lose weight, get fit, earn more money, get a better job, get a new partner, get a new life- All big stuff.  The dictionary meaning of the word resolution is “A firm decision to do or not to do something”.

How about we start the New Year resolution process by making a firm decision not to repeat the failings of new years past. How about we don’t make the start of the failure process the first day of the New Year. How about we make a firm decision to be kinder to ourselves, set small achievable goals, set out over a longer period of time, that in sum will total a major difference to us, our health, wellbeing and our business.

Yes, I want to be thinner and I want to be thinner now.

To do that in a short space of time is a major undertaking that will make me and all those around me miserable and come the third week in January I will have fallen by the wayside and fallen out with my nearest and dearest. I will be pounds lighter, but they will be the pounds I have paid to join the slimming group I joined this time last year. That’s not a fresh start- it’s a reunion!

So let’s re think the process and do something different that will inevitably give us the results we so desire over a sustainable length of time.

I am going to eat less and move more.  I don’t have to starve myself and sign up for a marathon. I want to increase my overall fitness levels, which doesn’t mean I have to train all day every day and “Davina” my way through life.

Successful, Profit Making Business

I want to run a successful, profit making business.  That doesn’t mean I have to throw all my time and money at what I am doing now in the hope that something hits the target.  What I need to do is make a firm decision to stop doing what doesn’t work, delegate what I don’t want to do or don’t have the skill set to do, yet still needs to be done. And once I have done that I can concentrate on making the most of the skill set I do have and the spare time I will have created for myself to therefore be more productive.

So this time next year when I am my new, thinner, healthier self, heading a successful international business, you will know it’s not because I made a firm decision to do somethings, it was because I made a firm decision not to do somethings – one of them being the ironing.

Happy New Year Everyone.

Ruth x