Resolutions: Setting Yourself Up For Success to Follow Through and Achieve Your Goals

I am great for dreaming up exciting adventures and educational activities that my kids will enjoy. Unfortunately, like most busy mothers, the logistics of making my ideas reality does not happen as often as I would like. In this season of making resolutions, I am reminded it is not the number of ideas you have, or the multitude of resolutions you make, but the ones with which you actually follow through that count.

It’s only the resolutions you keep which change your life for the better. The ones that are tossed by the wayside before the end of January seldom have any positive effect on your physical or mental health. Even worse they often create a sense of failure that discourages you from trying again. Without goals and resolutions life becomes dreary and meaningless, with too many goals, we become overwhelmed, frustrated and discouraged.

Sometimes we fail to count the time, resources or money it will take to complete a resolution or idea. Other times it’s physical or mental fatigue that makes it difficult to follow through. Sometimes it’s apathy because the resolution wasn’t even one of our choice. Oftentimes we get caught up in an atmosphere of everybody’s making them so I have to too. Then there are the well-meaning but clueless relatives who push us into making the resolutions they think we need.

Other times its just that our life is too cluttered with parasitic people or activities which we feel pressured to do, to find time for the people and activities we care about. Whatever the reason, it’s best to be selective about the promises and resolution we make. It’s easier to reach the finish line with a few focused resolutions than a mile long list of goals!

Last month, I wrote about my children’s visions for the graham cracker and candy spaceships they hoped to build. (You can find that post here. —> The Perfect Gift to Give Your Child This Holiday Season: Your TIME ) Spending time talking about their designs was important, but following through with the activity was equally necessary.

Anticipation without the opportunity to try what they are anticipating leads children down the path of despair and apathy. Often we fail to follow through because we are afraid of failure: our own or someone we love.

Creation is not fail proof. Graham crackers get soggy and pretzels break. Frosting dries before you finish placing all the candy, and some how the whole thing just doesn’t look like you envisioned! Then you start to worry how the outside world will judge your accomplishment and your whole world seems to come crashing down. Likewise resolutions don’t always come together how you thought they would. Dreaming about a better future is not without risks. Allowing those you love to take flight into the unknown is scary, but not even trying robs you and them of the lessons and adventures learned along the way.

Sometimes the details we fret over don’t even matter in the end, my son couldn’t get the starship’s saucer to balance on the right angle and after a few broken bowl-shaped ice-cream cones settled for any angle that was stable. In spite of the fact his spaceship engineering wasn’t up to his self-imposed standards, he still walked way with “Best Landscape” for his depiction of planets, nebula, red giants and neutron stars.

Sometimes we are our own worst critics!

This year as you contemplate your New Year’s Resolutions take time to think about each one.

• Will my resolutions make a fundamental difference in my life, or will it make no difference whatsoever by next year whether I achieve it or not?
• Is the resolution something I want to achieve, or is it something I feel pressured to do by others?
• Do I have too many goals to honestly complete?
• Does the time, money or resources needed for the resolution make it unlikely that I will follow through?
• Are my resolutions not challenging enough; am I failing to follow through out of boredom?
• Are my resolutions unbalanced; are they all about me or solely about others? Both personality and family/community goals are needed for a healthy social/emotional balance.
• Do I need to prioritize and weed out things that clutter my life to promote my ability to follow through?

Only you can answer these questions and only you can make your resolutions –it’s your life and your future. Make it the best one you can!

Happy New Year, the Homesteading Hen

Do you have a favorite criteria for selecting your New Year’s Resolutions?