At last, the day is here. You have your mission and twelve monthly milestones to keep you on track. And today you perform your first, new action to keep your resolution on track. Maybe you’re a bit hungover from a lot of festivity — and maybe you don’t much feel like doing your one action. But I am here to tell you to do it anyway. Start the journal, go for the walk, log in and count your calories or hit the gym –even if it’s not a wholehearted effort, and not your best performance. The power of having fulfilled what you said you would do will bring you enormous satisfaction; satisfaction that far exceeds the discomfort you experience to do it.
There’s a lot more that I will be sharing over the next few weeks and months– research-based tips and tricks to make this easier, and some startling ideas that you might find counter-intuitive, but which serve to help people succeed time and time again. But today I just want to reinforce the last three suggestions from last year, and one other insight.
First, remember your three actions, rituals, behaviors or habits. As the very embodiment of your mission, they should all be in some form of reality now. One of them was a daily action, one a weekly action and the third a form of journal or documentation. These are really powerful tools that will keep you tactically on-track, day in and day, out as you approach your goal. Again, do the daily action, whatever it is, TODAY. There may be days this year when you can’t do it, and you will want to have some compassion for that rare failure. But not today. This is your first day. Do it.
And that brings me to the second important insight. I’d like you to join me in considering your resolution — your mission– as a personal and profound exercise in integrity. What do I mean by that? Well, imagine that instead of viewing your mission as something you want to accomplish, or some challenge you hope to conquer, try seeing it instead, as your word. Your word — that is to say, your promise — is the very foundation of who you are. It is the thing you give to your children in every moment as you protect and nurture them. Your word is what you give as you stand before your family and your clergyman to marry and promise loyalty and love. Your word is how you fulfill the contracts you sign and those on which you shake hands. It is as powerful a force as a person has.
So I am asking you to wrap your mission and the actions you designed for it in your promise; not as a way to scold or shame yourself, but as a way to embolden and gild it. And once you have made that promise — to yourself, to me, to your spouse, friends or whoever you entrust with that promise — you have put your very self at stake in the fulfillment of that word each and every day.
Having re-framed this mission in this way, I once again suggest that, despite feeling champagne-foggy, or sleepy – or even though there may be New Year’s Day parties to attend — give yourself the immense gift of keeping your word. Fulfill your daily task and document it. I, for one, would love to have you comment here and learn how day one went! And I will celebrate with you the amazing power of your word and your invention — and toast to the fulfillment of your mission –one day at a time, throughout 2016!
Cheers!
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