It’s Time To Get Defined

In my previous post, Are you asking the wrong question? A New way to approach your resolutions in 2012, I finished by posing the question of, “How will you know when your resolution has been completed?” The answer is rudimentary, unless you defined your WHY with an exact goal, you won’t know. How can you get to where you want to be if you do not know where you are going?

Let’s use our example from my last post of, “Getting in shape so that you can have more energy to play with your kids.” Now that you have your WHY and you have made the emotional connection to why this is important to you, it’s time to define exactly what having more energy to play with your kids really means.

What does having more energy mean to you? I know what it means to me, but it might and likely does mean something completely different to you. Does it mean being able to walk around the block, playing on the monkey bars or riding your bike on the local trails without being out of breath or falling behind? Take a few minutes and think about your answer and then write it down on the same sheet of paper as your WHY.

Okay, so using the examples from above, let’s give your new direction a destination. If you would like to walk around the block, how far is that? How long would you like to be able to play on the monkey bars? How far do you want to ride your bike? Once again, think about your answers and then write them down. Got it? Good!

So let us take a step back and look at just how far you have come from your original ambiguous resolution of “Getting in shape.” You now know WHY you want to get into shape, how you will feel when you are in shape and where you will be when you get there. Your new and improved definitive resolution reads like this, “I want to get into shape so that I have more energy to play on the monkey bars with my kids for 30 minutes without being tired or out of breath.” Excellent job! Gold Star! Are you beginning to see the power behind this new way of making resolutions?

Now that you have your new emotionally connected and defined resolutions down on paper, how are you going to get there? It’s time to bring out the map! Tune in tomorrow for the final part of this three step process towards your realized resolutions in 2012.