The Curious Case of New year Resolution

Hello All !!! Wish you a very happy new year !

                Looking back at 2012, The one thing that stood out for me was the realization of the importance of forming Habits. We are all what we think and more importantly ,what we do. The more we do the same thing ,it becomes an Habit. Before you think of this as a Moral Science lecture, let me do a deep dive using the example of International obsession  ahead of every New Year, the New Year Resolutions…

                Before 2012, Most of my new year resolutions did not  get past the first few weeks of the New Year. Most of my resolutions were like

1.       Doing half-an hour of exercise every day

2.       Writing a blog post each day

3.       Spending Quantity time with the family everyday

4.       Become debt-free by 2016

And so forth….The problem with my resolutions were not with the purpose, but with the way they were defined and their hard-focus on the timeline. Most of my new year resolution were focused on the Outcome that I wished I would attain someday. While it is good to have the Goals, the resolution  did not talk about the life-style changes needed on to accomplish the resolutions. I was the same person, before and after 12:00 AM on the 1^st of January. And having set some high standards such as Half-an-hour exercise routine, I would not have time to do it and my resolutions soon fade into the horizon.

I then happened to read Leo Babauta’s http://zenhabits.net/  which is a blog  on developing Habits. So instead of a new year resolution focused on just the Outcome, why not focus on the developing  Habits  in the new year that will pay us over the Life time. So my new year resolutions nowadays are worded like  this :

Resolution 1 : Habit of Physical exercise …even if at least 2 minutes per day

Resolution 2 : Habit of Writing …even if it is not a full blog post each day

Resolution 3: Habit of being away from TV & web in the evenings to play with my daughter…even if it is for Half-an-hour

Resolution 4: Habit of Debt closure…even if it means an extra payment of just Rs.100 over the  EMI

As you see the major purpose shifted  from  Outcome to doing the act, day-after-day. The result is that I stopped kicking myself for 2-minute exercise routines on someday as long as I made sure to do the Physical exercise for the day. My recommendation for all of you who have tough time with resolutions is to form New Year Habits instead. I am sure you are bound to have a sense of accomplishment each day without having to wait for the day you are  going to have  that Washboard  Abs.

After all, Life  is nothing  but a String of habits!