This Year It Will Stick

The end of one year and the beginning of a new one almost requires each of us reflect on the past and plan for the future. The idea of New Year’s resolutions has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. The other reality that’s equally embedded is that my resolutions are generally broken within the first 10 days! What the heck?!

Out with the Old

The last week of December, I found myself “nesting”. You know, going through closets looking for donation items, digging through photos deleting duplicates and poor pictures, thumbing through files and folders and documents to get to a place where I was only holding onto what was important. Funny how I entered the exercise knowing I’d be shedding a ton of unwanted, unneeded, and unnecessary stuff, only to realize that the jacket I haven’t worn for three years might still have an important spot in my wardrobe……..but I digress.

In with the Evidence

During my clean up, I came across a beautiful leatherbound notebook. I remember buying it, but I don’t remember doing anything with it. As I quickly spun through the book, I noticed there wasn’t much in it but some chicken scratch on the first 15 to 20 pages. As I dug in, I realized it was something I bought at the beginning of 2022 to meet my New Year Resolution of journaling every day! I lost my resolve for that on January 17th 2022; the notebook itself was hard evidence of that.

It occurred to me that year after year, I make one resolution or another. And year after year, shortly after the celebrations are over, I fail to keep the commitment I had made myself.

2023 is the Year

This year I wanted to change that, so I decided the following elements needed to be present to give me a chance of being successful with any resolution I might make:

1) Any resolution had to be connected to a why. It had to be important enough that I needed to do it, not that I wanted to do it.

2) I need to enlist an accountability partner. Someone that I trust and respect enough to course correct me in the event, I’m not living up to the resolution.

3) The commitment needs to be written down. And I plan to do that right here, right now.  

I resolve that in 2023, every two weeks, I will share an experience or life lesson with the people that take the time to read these LinkedIn posts.

• The why is to honor and thank all of the amazing individuals that shared their knowledge and life experience with me.
• The accountability partner is you. 

Making it Stick

The desired outcome is to build a community of people that are willing to share their experiences, their knowledge, so that collectively we get better at whatever our pursuits might be. 

Since you took the time to get this far, it would mean a lot if you’ll take just a few seconds to share your thoughts on how to best accomplish the goals and commitments you’ve established for yourself. 

Happy new year! ~Rick