Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

Here we are, January 23rd, and I’m already receiving emails for invites to “Broken Resolutions” parties and hearing from friends that they’ve already cheated on their diet/workout/productivity plan.

*sigh*

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions for myself (they don’t work for me), but for those of you who do and especially, for those of you who never keep them, it’s time to think about your goals & what they really mean to you.

First, if it’s something that you “resolve” to do – you should be serious about it right? I’m assuming that your Resolutions are actually serious, that you have resolved, mentally, that you want to follow them.

Secondly, if you’re resolved about something, you should have a plan of attack in order to execute. It’s very rare that any of us can just “resolve” to do something and then immediately do it.

Let’s say that you’ve resolved to change your eating habits in order to eat more vegetables. Actually acting on that includes changing your shopping lists, your cooking plans and recipes, your lunch ordering behavior and much more. This is true all of the time – really committing to making a change requires a plan of action and some realistic thinking.

To that end, I’d like to share two things for you to think about as we near the close of the first month of the year. The first is by way of Barry Ritholz’s blog, and speaks to the top mistakes people make in approaching behavioral change:

The second piece is something that might seem a bit tangential, at first, but that I believe should serve as a motivator in the pursuit of personal change.

This post on self-esteem and self-confidence makes this point:

“Self-confidence is the belief of believing in yourself; to believe that one is able to accomplish what one sets out to do, to overcome obstacles and challenges.”

So, if you made New Year’s Resolutions this year and have already discarded some or all of them, I suggest that you look at that choice and see it through the lens of achieving self-confidence. The mental impact of that abandonment is likely very poor. For many of you, this pattern of behavior weighs on you and continues to lead to the feeling that you can’t accomplish what you set out to do.

All is not lost, however. Through the simple act of revisiting your resolutions and actually creating a reasonable plan for change, you can reverse the cycle and set yourself on a path to creating greater self-confidence.

Go try it out .