In the United States, and other countries, it is an annual custom to create New Year’s Resolutions. This is where people take some time to think about what they would like to change in their life and they make resolutions to effect that change. In theory, it is admirable. However, in practice, it has a high failure rate. Another custom that follows the New Year’s Resolutions are the New Year’s Excuses for why they cannot be completed. As you know, at Take Control, we focus on accountability, not excuses.
Many of you who know me well have read my past writings on my international Information Age blog years back, volume 1 of Bite Sized Bits, Facebook and LinkedIn articles and posts as well as guest posts for various online sites. One thing I wrote about in the past was about not making New Year’s Resolutions. That’s right. Do not make them. Do not misread this as me not advocating for positive change. I wholeheartedly endorse positive and meaningful actions that allow you to achieve a higher better version or yourself and your life.
So what do I actually mean? Well, words are powerful. They can evoke great meaning and passion or they can do nothing. The words that evoke that great meaning and passion are different based upon the person which can vary by race, sex, creed, color religion and a multitude of other facts. Some words are strong enough to make people commit to violence and even war. Conversely, there are words that will instill calm and peace in people as well. One thing that I have observed is that not many people give any kind of emotional attachment or great meaning to the word “resolution.”
Resolution, as defined by Oxford Dictionaries, is a firm decision to do or not to do something. For some reason or another, this is not strong enough to keep people on track. I used to tell people to change their word to something like Commitment, like a New Year’s Commitment or a New Year’s Promise. Commitment, as defined by Oxford Dictionaries, is the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc. Similarly defined by the same source is Promise which is a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.
First of all, even the definitions evoke more meaning to me than resolution. But that is because the words commitment and promise are strong words that cause strong and positive emotional responses. However, the same may not be true to others. So, this year, after further analysis of my last hypothesis and statements of just changing your words, I am adding, “define your why.”
Okay…so what does that mean? Glad you asked. Defining your “why” is figuring out why you are doing something. This requires you to keep asking yourself to further refine and define until it is concrete. Let me give you a generic example. Please note, this is not one of my personal whys and only an example.
A New Year’s Resolution/Commitment/Promise could be I want to workout more. Why? Because I feel that I could be in better shape. Why? Because I do not exercise and I feel that working out could make me healthier and feel better. Why? Because I have read and seen many other people exercise and they look better and tell me they feel better. Why does that matter to you? Because I can’t fit in my clothes anymore and it is hard to sit in normal chairs. If you keep probing this person, you start to uncover that they were teased, or that they had others in their family who suffered from weight and eating problems. Even worse, they had a family member die from food related problems.
Wouldn’t you agree that saying “I want to work out so I become healthier and avoid dying at a young age” is a much stronger and more motivational statement than “because I feel I could be in better shape”? When that person feels like skipping the gym, their Why will help keep them motivated and the word they used to convey this will have more emotional meaning.
Whether you want to spend more time with family, become healthier, make more money, have more freedom, travel more, reinvent yourself or any number of things, make sure you use a word that will convey strong emotion in its meaning and combine that with a concisely defined Why.
My New Year’s Commitment, specifically for this website, is to contribute more content than I did last year. And my reason for doing so is to assist in effecting positive change in the lives of others through the utilization of my personal experiences; whether they were perceived as positive, negative or neutral.
So make your resolution, commitment, promise or other emotion evoking noun and establish your Why. Then…get to it!