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Nonsense
side-tracks
you from your work,
tricks you into wrong decisions and trips you short of your goals.

Nonsense
stops you from

being successful.
 

January 2008

You've made a resolution. Now make it stick

Welcome to 2008. This is Day #2 of making your resolutions stick. Are they sticking? If not, you could be making one of three obvious mistakes. So obvious, in fact, that we tend to overlook them when we want to blame someone or something for our failure. Here are the three mistakes. Pick the one that applies to you. Oh, what the heck! Be generous. Pick all three:

Obvious mistake #1: You are trying to. And here’s what you should do: Stop trying. Confused? Let me explain. Have you ever tried to stand up? Go on, try. Hey, I did not say ‘stand up’! I said ‘try to stand up’. 'Trying to' is not the same as doing it. 'Trying to' is about struggling and moaning and heaving and groaning - and never quite making it.

I asked a friend once how he stopped smoking. He said that he had not stopped. He had simply decided not to smoke that day. Of course, he repeated ‘that one today’ every day. So, don’t try to stick to your resolutions. Just do it for one day.

Obvious mistake #2: A resolution is a mental intention. Although you have ‘thought’ a resolution for the future, you are still stuck in the past. The trick is to move all of ‘you’ into the future. One way of doing so is to act on the other meanings of ‘resolution’. The word ‘resolution’ also means ‘separation into components’; ‘causing discord to pass into concord’; ‘boldness of purpose’; and ‘solving problems’.

In other words, you should understand the components that make up your resolution; remove discord that prevents commitment; be bold in execution and learn to solve problems that crop up. There you have it, the wheel of success again: understand, commit, do and learn. (Of course, it helps if the wheel is turning in the right direction.)

Obvious mistake #3: We forget that a resolution is a choice about how you will behave from now on. Resolutions tend to be about virtuous conduct, about behaving better. Maybe a resolution to behave badly would stick more easily!

Now go on. Enough with the excuses already. Make your good/bad (delete as appropriate) behavior stick.
 

Welcome to our side of the nonsense divide.