NEW YEAR’s Resolutions

OK.  It’s that time again.  We have all indulged, over-indulged and otherwise gotten off track.

What track did you get off?

The question is not an idle question.  Do you have a track?

Most of us think of our new resolutions in terms of our most recent behavior.  We ate too much over the holidays-we should try to lose weight.  We spent too much, we need to stop spending and try to reduce our debt.  We drank too much-let’s behave better.

Those are all good things, but they really fall short of your potential for success in the coming year.

Setting personal goals is an extremely important part of achieving the success you want to have in your life.  Effective goal setting requires a more concerted effort than most people apply.

What if instead of saying you would lose 20 pounds, you set a goal to manage your weight over the next year?  This goal requires you to know how much weight you want to lose.  This goal would require you to pay attention to your weight and make adjustments to your eating habits and exercise habits as you went forward.  In doing this, you would not only be able to make the choices required to lose the weight, you would recognize when you were getting off the track and be able to make smaller corrections without feeling so overwhelmed.

There is no area of your life in which effective goal setting is more necessary than in your personal financial and economic health.

The reason this is true is because everything you do or do not do has an economic impact in your life.  The younger you are, the more impact they have.

I know.  Most people think that because you are young, you have more time to “make up” for whatever mistakes you might make.  While this is true, the opportunities you miss when you are young make it far more difficult to reach your goals as you get older.  Doing it right from the beginning makes it much, much easier.

Effective goal setting requires you to have very specific long term, intermediate term and short terms goals.  If you don’t know what your long term goals are, you have no hope of making a good decision that supports those goals.

If you have specific goals that are aligned for all time frames, you will be able to make specific plans for achieving your shortest term goals with the full confidence that the actions you are taking are going in the direction you ultimately want to go.

I would suggest the best New Year’s Resolution you can make is to decide that you are going to establish goals for yourself and manage your decision making to achieve those goals.  The first step for you to take is to write down your long term, intermediate term and short term goals.  Then make a specific action plan to achieve or exceed your short term goals and manage your activities to accomplish that.

If you do this, you will be very happy when you sit down to update your goals for next year’s resolutions.