At the end of 2011, I made the conscious decision to not make any New Year’s resolutions. As many people, I’ve never been very good at keeping to my resolutions, and decided instead to make very specific and what I thought were reachable goals. Instead of “I will work out every day in the new year and get super fit” I made the goal to complete one of my workout programs (I love Chalean Extreme and had recently purchased Insanity). I made 10 goals total, and then decided on my top 3, or what I thought would be my most challenging goals. For each, I mapped myself out a 60-day challenge, wherein I rewarded myself at 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, and then the 2-month mark. I used things that I really wanted (or thought that I needed since I had just moved into my new place… some small, some larger) and told myself I could not purchase them until I stuck with my goals for that pre-determined amount of days. If/when I faltered, I would have to start back at the beginning and try again. Maybe this isn’t the best way to go about it, but I figured it was worth a try… if in the past I’ve only been moderately successful at motivating myself intrinsically with my good will and desire to improve as a person, why not try to motivate myself extrinsically with material things for a change and see how it goes. Who knows… it was worth a shot, and it made my OCD side happy to have something mapped and organized. And maybe you’re thinking… what a waste of time… well, maybe. But I truly believe we should never stop improving ourselves (makes me think of the commercial with the birds… what is it… Lowe’s?) :) but to do that, I think it’s important to have some sort of plan (whether it is simple or elaborate doesn’t matter… just something there to strive for).

Well, here we are at the end of the year, and I can successfully say that I reached 3 of my 10 goals. As far as the 60-day challenges went… they fizzled out after about 5 months (yes, I actually made it 5 months trying to complete all of them)… I finished 2 of them and now can say I succesfully stuck with 1 of the 2 at the end of the year. Gotta say I’m pretty excited about my 30% success rate, but I’m also looking forward to 2013 and wondering how I should do things differently. I think the biggest thing I need to do is look at my goals, figure out which ones are actually attainable… and adjust them if they aren’t (it’s really just a list of things I would like to accomplish within the year; they don’t need to be life-changing). Then I need to make a plan that fits each goal… maybe I’ll share them on here… maybe not, we’ll see :) either way I’m just excited for the new year and all of the new possibilities it will inevitably bring with it!

Time to make a list!