There’s Still Time – Great Year
By Silver Rose
There’s Still Time to Make this a Great Year!
It’s sad, but true. Most of us have a brain freeze in mid-December and the cerebral cortex doesn’t wake up until sometime around January 5th. When we finally come to, we are shocked (shocked, I tell you!) to find out it’s an entirely different year (in 2000, it was a new century, for crying out loud!)
In light of that, today would be a very good time to decide what needs to be done between now and mid-December to salvage the year. I don’t want any of you to come crying to me if you wake up on January 5th to discover you neglected to finish something very important in 2004. You have been notified – the end is near!
Three months is a wonderful lead time to produce some pretty great results. Right this second, I want you to grab a pen and a piece of paper and spend five minutes answering the following question:
The first draft of this column had a different question in the box – it asked only about results. However, as I started to do the exercise myself, I realized I was simply writing down tasks to complete. As I looked at the list, I realized it was redundant. I already know what tasks I have to do.
So then I asked myself, “How do I want to feel when the holidays arrive?” And that’s when I realized that what is important to focus on between now and year’s end are those things guaranteed to improve self-esteem.
At the end of the year, I’m not interested in looking back and realizing I’ve gotten 80% of my tasks finished. I’m much more interested in looking back to see how I’ve grown. Am I a better human being than I was a year ago? Have I been true to my values? Am I taking care of myself better? These are the things that are guaranteed to bolster the spirits at a time of year when so many are focused on what we didn’t get done on that endless “to do” list.
When I listed the results I want by year’s end, I realized they have one thing in common: they all involve stopping some form of self-punishment. For example, I want to reach my goal weight by year’s end. Not because I want to look good (although that will be enjoyable), but because I can then stop punishing myself for putting it off. When I get on the scale and realize I’m not any closer this week than I was last week, I feel like a fraud. And it doesn’t feel good. And then I punish myself for the failure. In order to reach my goal, I definitely need to stop that.
Remember, the Law of Attraction says, “You attract more of what you focus on.” The more I beat myself up for NOT losing weight, the more I’m focused on not losing weight!
Because I told myself I would is the most important reason to strive to achieve anything. The more often we do something we said we would, the higher our self-esteem.
Ironically, most of us do the things we promised others we would do for them but, when it comes to keeping promises to ourselves, we think it not nearly as important.
If you had a friend who continued to break his promises to you, would you eventually decide he didn’t really care about you? That’s no different from the internal message we deliver each time we fail to keep promises to ourselves. The message is, “You’re not important enough for me to do this; what others want comes first. I don’t care enough about you to do this.”
If you don’t care about yourself, how can you ever expect others to?
Between now and year’s end, I invite you to focus on those results you’ve decided to produce and how great it’s going to feel on New Year’s Day when you look back and see how much you grew as a person during 2004. Read the list every day. Applaud yourself for every forward step you take. Applaud yourself when you fall off the path and get back up again. Above all, focus on delivering to yourself (through your actions and results) the following message, “I love you and I will keep my promises to you from now on.”
Because I said I would.
