Making the Change. Your short guide to making new year’s resolutions stick.

Making the Change: 3. Where are you now?

You are excited about the future. You know what you want and why you want it. Now take a moment and examine where you are now. This helps you to identify the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. It is also good to reflect on the journey to “here” and celebrate and express gratitude for things that you did well and are going well.

There are plenty of online resources to help you evaluate where you are now. Doing a ‘’Wheel of Life” exercise will prove to be helpful. The point is to identify the areas of your life that needs to change and prioritize them.

You should find a common theme emerge between exercises 1 and 3. This confirms that you have selected the correct areas in your life to work on.

Continuing with the example of Health and Wellbeing, I have confirmed that my health is poor when I evaluated myself using the Wheel of Life exercise. I weighed myself and can see that I am overweight. My family and friends and my doctor have expressed concerns about my health. Being honest with myself I have come to realize that things need to change and that I cannot continue living in blissful ignorance.

I also evaluated my Wealth and was able to express appreciation of how well my business is doing and that investing wisely has paid off. I will continue to keep a steady hand over this, but there is nothing drastic that I need to do regarding my financial portfolio and responsibilities.

Now it is your turn:

Exercise:

Evaluate your current state: how are you doing? What is going well, what needs to change? Remember to celebrate and acknowledge the things that are going well. List no more than 5 areas that need to change, write them down and identify 2 broad strategies that you can think of that can improve these strategies. Remember to write it down!

Example:

I confirmed my health is poor and needs to be improved.my energy levels are low and it impedes my interactions with my family, friends and clients. It makes me feel guilty which makes me cranky. It is also affecting my performance and is starting to affect every other area of my life. I am also losing my confidence and my self-image is slipping. I can address this by following a proper diet, regular exercise and not skipping my medication.