Have a Happy New You

 This is the time once again that we wish each other a "prosperous", a "happy", a "productive" (the list is endless) new year. I wish you, reading this, a happy new year too, but that is as far as I can go, wishing you a happy new year. Whether it will be happy or not depends on two major factors, Mother Nature and you.

I wish you a happy new you! As papers, computer spreadsheets and of late, smart phones are inundated with lists of new year’s resolutions, they should be actually be filled with new you’s resolutions.  It is so amazing that so many of us believe that the year brings in with it some changes into our lifestyles that we even take time to make such wishes, yet the actually wish should be that we be a better person in the new year.

If things have not been going well for you at your work place, it is highly unlikely that the company will increase your wage or improve your working conditions the following year just because you wish so. Again we will meet here end of next year as long as we live, wishing each other another better new year. I can put my last penny on this; things will still be exactly what they are for you now, if not worse. I am not by anyway casting a cloud of malevolence, but am only calling a spade a digging tool, not a spoon.

There is absolutely nothing you can do about natural forces, e.g death of a loved one, natural disaster, etc. When phenomenons like those cross your life path and you survive, pick yourself up and continue walking. You have survived! The point in this is that people should be wishing that you became a changed person next year, not the year to change to be better, because it never will. You see, we all foolishly believe that the New Year is actually new, in some sense. It is the same old recurring days and months, what is new is the date, which is only a naming or numbering system that helps us measure time. Otherwise there is nothing new. This time the New Year’s Day is on a Tuesday, What’s new about Tuesdays? I have seen about 1950 of them in my entire life and they are only just other days, so is Tuesday 1^stJanuary 2013. You probably think am trying to render useless the purpose of celebrating the New Year, no. I also think it is important, at a certain interval, to sit down and measure your progress (or lack thereof) in life, and celebrate if there is a reason to. This can be done in June, October, February or any other month of the year, depending on when and how you had set your goals. Because 1st of January is the first day of the calendar year, a time frame that the early citizens of this earth set in order to measure time, so that we can calibrate our activities with those of the standardised world, it doesn’t mean that nature will start afresh on that date, simply because it’s a new year.

While nature may not change at the start of a new year, we human beings are able to change our lifestyle to suit the way we want it to be. A tree may have suffered in adverse weather the whole of 2012, unless it is cut down or the weather patterns change, that tree will still suffer in 2013. We are humans, not trees; we are blessed to be the most talented of the animal kingdom. We can move if the surroundings do not suit us or we can make the surroundings suit us. How lucky we are!! Despite this gift, it is still surprising how many a people, celebrate New Year with a true belief that the year will change their lives, yet the solution is simple and is within. Change thyself and your life will change. Then you can celebrate! This is called personal development. There is need to look at one’s habits and attitude towards life in the past year, put everything under scrutiny, see what made you gain positively, and work on to improve that, and what worked negatively against your personal growth, and ditch the plan or habit right away

Resolutions

This is where goals and planning take effect. At this time of the year we call them resolutions, New Year’s resolutions, to be precise. Unfortunately, we always set the resolutions without any seriousness at all. If you have any resolutions and you have not written them down, you are just as good as having none at all. First of all you have to have a wish, something that you would like to have or achieve in the year ahead. Calculate a time frame at which you want to achieve it. Then spell out clearly a plan or method that you will use to achieve or reach that goal. Break the method into steps that will be assessable at certain intervals in order to measure progress; this can be a daily activity, weekly, monthly etc. As you go on, strike off the list those that you have successfully achieved, and review those that you need to try on again. Once you start doing that, you will be able to see where you started from, and definitely where you are heading. Nothing gives you more pleasure, satisfaction and courage than the fact that you can see that you are on the right track. Starting is the most difficult thing, but once started, you will not wish to stop, and it becomes an addictive habit.

Achieving gaols is not only simply writing a list that you can tick, it means making a lot of sacrifices, some of them painful. You need to give your life an overhaul. For example, if your goal is to lose 10kg weight at the end of the year, and one of the methods to achieve that is to stop going to that fast food outlet everyday, it may also be wise to minimise hanging out with the friends that frequent the outlet everyday. They may easily lead you back there. It is important to note that peer pressure is one of the major reasons why goals are not achieved. People fail to achieve goals because they do not want to be ridiculed by their friends or because they fear they will lose their place in the circles or cliques that they belong to.You will need a strong mental attitude for this, remember, you want to achieve your gaols, not their goals, so it is only you who can control your life, not anyone else. Anticipate challenges on the way. An easy road never takes you anywhere, but the one with obstacles makes you wiser and stronger.

I believe everyone has wishes for a better life. Those wishes will remain just that, wishes, for as long as one lives, except if they are turned into dreams and the dreams are turned into action.This can be done by setting them into measurable goals that can be achieved at a specified length of time. It also should be one’s desire to attain those goals, that burning desire, the drive, the willingness to achieve, all need to be there if one has to be successful. More often than not, we have blamed friends, family and other circumstances for our failures, yet, more often than not; it is our own fault that we fail. Think of a football ground that has no goals. Imagine if there was a match between two teams, how were we going to determine which team won, or lost? So is a life without any goals, there is no direction at all. It is impossible to monitor any progress or lack thereof. So many people think goals are for people who are in business. That is not true,for your life to run smoothly, you have to have goals, strictly monitored and adhered to, be they financial goals or just day to day activities like cutting the back garden grass, it has to be well planned.

It is from planning of these goals that we find ourselves being able to manage our time well. Time management can be head-wrecking, if not impossible, if we do not have a properly laid down plan for our lives. From daily activities to yearly dreams, we may find ourselves missing deadlines or failing to complete tasks because of poor time management.There is no such a thing like “I don’t have time”. If somebody has time, what about you, where did take yours to? Time is the only wealth shared equally between the rich and the poor; we all have 24 hours a day. The rich do not have 26-hour days. It is therefore of paramount importance that goal setting is done, in order for one to manage time well.

Here is a start for you. I have personally tried this and it worked for me. We are going to start with simple daily activities. Please note that these activities may vary between individuals. I used to wake up five minutes or more behind time, and sometimes leave without even dressing my bed because I would be running late for work. And it became a habit. I would set my alarm for the right time, but keep on extending by 5 minutes when it goes off. So one of my goals this year gone was to get rid of this “bed” habit. I set my daily waking up time to 6 am and told myself I will adhere to it. Even if I were not going to work, I would wake up at that time and do something else, exercise, read a book or do other plans. At that time my Aloe Vera business was doing well, so I had time to plan for my activities for the day. I put up the plan on my laptop, in a spreadsheet format (you can do that on a piece of paper, it doesn’t matter). Each day I woke up at six, I would give myself a tick, where I missed the time I would give myself an “x”. It was marked out of 6 because I had given myself Sunday as the only day I will wake up at 9am or later. The first week was rather tough, having been used to last minute rushing. I did well but missed one day, so I got 5 out of 6 days. That was not bad but it was not good enough to give me a smile. “Why would I fail my goal by just a day?” I asked myself. The following week I did it again, this time getting 100% record. From there onwards, it was just second nature. I started adding more goals and achieving them as I went along. You remember I said I was so used to waking up late and leaving the bed undressed? That was a bad habit that I was used to and was addicted to it, unfortunately. Good habits, like the bad ones, are also addictive. Now I was so addicted to my daily goals in such a way that it felt like they were just happening on their own. Step by step, I kept on raising the bar for myself and I would reach it. You can do that too, going from daily to weekly, monthly and yearly goals. The small goals (daily ones) are called confidence builders; they help you achieve the big ones, (yearly or lifetime goals).

At the end of the year, you can look back and take an analysis of your activities, those that you achieved and those that you did not. For those that you did not, investigate why, maybe you will need a change of plan or method in which you were trying to achieve them. Then you can celebrate. Celebrate a year that is past. Celebrate life. I personally think celebrating New Year in advance is the wrong order of doing things. It is like getting paid before you work. Perhaps that is the reason why so many people forget about their resolutions as early as February, who cares, they already have celebrated them.

Take a look at my daily activity goal table.You can do something like that, filling in what is relevant to you.

Week ending 15 July 2012

	Wake up time	30 minute exercise	Read a Motivational piece
Monday	6:00	Done	Done
Tuesday	5:42	Done	Done
Wednesday	5:51	Done	Done
Thursday	6:00	Not Done	Done
Friday	5:53	Not Done	Done
Saturday	6:00	Done	Done
Sunday	8:21	Not Done	Done
Total	100%	58%	100%

You can see in the table above for this particular week, I did well on the waking up time, and reading a motivational paragraph/verse each day, however, I failed to get full marks on the thirty-minute exercise target. I was aware of the reasons why I did not, so the following week, I revised my activities and I was able to achieve a 100% score. You can pick your own activities, these were relevant to me. Remember, however small the goal or activity may appear to be, the impact is huge towards your attitude and confidence building