New Year Brings New Challenges
JIM STOVALL
Each year at the beginning of a new calendar, we all struggle with trying to write the appropriate year on our checks, letters, and other documents. In addition to this annual ritual, many of us wrestle with the daunting task of setting New Year’s Resolutions. Before you set this year’s resolutions, think back to last year’s resolution and resolutions you have made in previous years. If you are getting ready to copy stamp the resolution you have made for the last four years and made for this year’s New Year’s Resolution, you are setting yourself up for failure once again.
If you keep doing the same things you have been doing, you are going to continue getting the same result you have received in the past. If the same goal is still valid and meaningful to you in your personal or professional life, ask yourself, “What is going to be different about this year as opposed to previous years’ resolutions that have gone unfulfilled?” Be sure that you have a new approach, a more realistic outlook, or different tools with which to attack your goal or you are simply going to fall into the same trap again and again.
It is devastating to allow yourself to set goals and then fail year after year. Success becomes a habit. Unfortunately, so does failure. And if you allow these New Year’s Resolutions to be something that you set in a half-hearted fashion because you know you’re going to fail anyway, it will be just that much easier to dismiss your life goals in the future.
It is important that you live your life honestly so that everyone around you can know that when you tell them something you really mean it and that they can count on you. As critical as honesty is in our society today, it is even more critical that you be honest with yourself. When you set a goal or a New Year’s Resolution, you are making a commitment to the most important person in the world – that is you. To quote the late great William Shakespeare, “To thine own self be true.”
Today’s the day!
Jim Stovall is the president of Narrative Television Network, as well as a published author, columnist, and motivational speaker. He may be reached at 5840 South Memorial Drive, Suite 312, Tulsa, OK 74145-9082
Updated 01-14-2005
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