Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

I think New Year’s Res­ol­u­tions are a really crap way to make pos­it­ive changes to the way you live.

Why? Well, I reckon it’s much more effect­ive to start doing some­thing than to stop doing something.

Most New Year’s Res­ol­u­tions seem to revolve around giv­ing some­thing up. So, on the first of Janu­ary this year, I’d like to pro­pose some­thing a little dif­fer­ent. Let’s say you want to lose weight and get fit. A big cliché, but def­in­itely a com­mon desire!

If that’s you, don’t bother prom­ising to eat less chocol­ate and start run­ning every morn­ing. Instead, set your­self a big, tan­gible tar­get for way off in the future. Look right now for an event near you in the fol­low­ing sum­mer or autumn — char­ity fun-run, duath­lon, triath­lon or Iron­man. Aim high, put the date in your cal­en­dar, and start train­ing. Once the event comes around, if you’ve com­mit­ted your­self, you’ll have achieved that weight loss and fit­ness as a by-product.

Hav­ing some­thing on which to focus is some­thing I’ve found to be really import­ant if you want to achieve some­thing big­ger, even if you have to men­tally ‘invent’ that point of focus. When I had tough days on the bike, I used to visu­al­ise my girl­friend (now wife!) stand­ing on the hori­zon with a big smile on her face. I know that’s vomit-inducingly corny, but it got me across the Sahara!

I think you can apply this change of per­spect­ive to almost any­thing. Set your­self a tar­get for the end of 2010 while you’re see­ing in the New Year.