Are you having trouble coming up with a New Year’s Resolution? A lot of the challenges we personally face today are ones that we’ve dealt with for years and will continue to struggle with in the future. What if there was a way to break this ongoing cycle?
Let’s say that you were offered a once in a lifetime chance to send a short message to yourself in the past. Perhaps 20 years ago. The message would only be a few sentences long and couldn’t cover something like stock tips or lottery numbers.
It would have to be some sort of personal advice. What would you want yourself to know? What would you like to change about yourself?
Would the advice be about education (pay attention in math class), a career choice (pager sales won’t last forever), or of a more personal nature (get to know the woman in the red dress)?
Do you have the advice in your mind? Now I’ve got some bad news for you. We can’t send a message back to your past self. But there’s a very good chance that the advice you came up with still applies to your life.
This can serve as the basis for a New Year’s Resolution. If you wanted to tell yourself to become better in math, what’s stopping you from addressing that shortcoming today? Many will say, time and energy, but apparently you had no trouble telling your past self to find the time and energy. So why not do it now?
If you would have told yourself to pursue a different career, then take some steps to see if there’s an opportunity to do something new. Before you start saying how you’d have to go back to school or take a lower salary, just investigate. Get the knowledge first and then worry about making a decision.
If a personal relationship would have been the focus of your message, then it’s slightly more complicated situation. Obviously, there’s no one size fits all solution. But if you’re not happy where you are, then you need to decide whether you’ll stick with the status quo or look to make some changes.
Bottom Line: It’s amazing that we usually know what we’d like to change in our lives but we rarely take steps to do anything different. Perhaps the arrival of a new year is a good place to start.
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