Take stock of past year before setting your sights on next
Stress for Success
December 27, 2011


How was your 2011? Did you accomplish your 2011 New Year’s resolutions like lose those ten pounds or save more money?

In approaching the New Year we typically think of what we’ll resolve to do in the next year. However, first taking stock of the year you just lived helps you better plan for the next.

At the beginning of 2011, if you had answered the following “magic questions” what would your answers have been?
· What did you want more of? E.g., more time with family, more energy, more savings
· What did you want less of? E.g., fewer arguments, less TV watching, less debt

Your answers make up your desires and wants; your potential goals. Write your answers as they would have been last January.

Next, assess how you did in reaching your goals. Then determine how important each was and still is to you.

If you didn’t make progress on your objectives, why didn’t you? Were your sights set too high? If so, cut them down into more digestible, bite-size targets: instead of losing 20 pounds shoot to lose ten.

Determine how badly you wanted to accomplish them. I believe ultimately we do what we truly want to do. So if you vowed you wanted to have fewer arguments with your spouse but that didn’t happen, what might you be getting out of the continuation of the arguments? Are you a controller and convinced you’re right and s/he’s wrong and it would be going against your own beliefs to back down so you keep arguing? To prove you’re right? Or do the arguments supply the drama you grew up with and grew accustomed to? An absence of this might make you feel uncomfortable.
Also, look at how the goal above is phrased: “to want fewer arguments,” versus “to have fewer arguments.” The former is a desire, the latter requires changing your behavior. Make your new 2012 goal into a specific, measurable behavioral change: “To decrease arguments with my spouse by 50% by June 2012.” This requires you to start by counting how many arguments you presently have before you can begin to decrease them by 50%. It also requires you to have a strategy of how to stop arguing. What is that strategy? Will you deep breathe each time you feel your blood pressure go up with him/her to calm yourself? Will you program yourself to stop arguing, like, “I respond calmly and avoid arguments.”

The truth is, if you don’t really want to accomplish your goals you won’t. And holding onto an unattained goal is stressful. So, set yourself up for success by creating goals:
· You truly want to accomplish;
· That once you achieve them you’ll feel better about yourself;
· That are realistic and measurable;
· That are written down on paper;

The New Year can be a symbolic new beginning and a potentially good time to commit to desired, realistic and rewarding change.

Happy New Year.

Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.