Happy New Year!

No sooner did we lift our glasses in celebration, than most of us engaged in a discussion with our friends/family or created an internal dialogue about hopes for 2009, regrets about 2008 and resolutions made, kept, failed and planned again.

And then there were the confessions and promises for change this next year despite our 2008 failures. We feel bolstered in the knowledge that many people fess up to mess ups. Even Oprah is featured in news and magazine articles as having put almost all the weight back on that she so publicly and proudly lost.

Changing a habit…particularly one that is pleasurable although destructive….seems to be our yearly challenge, and one that is defeated before we even embark.

“All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.”— Alexander Woollcott

But this year will be different. This year, Change is the national motto and, frankly, a necessity.

So, taking a phrase from a popular tee shirt:  “Be the Change” is our overriding resolution.

Great idea, we all may be saying….but how?

I am reminded of the “Be Here Now” slogan made popular by Ram Dass in the 1970′s

One idea is to make your change an “in the moment” action rather than a task on your to do list.  Future thinking, procrastination and unmet promises create self-blame and resistance. When you promise and put off, you are living in the future state rather than acting in the present.  This, we are reminded, causes anxiety which saps our energy to act.

“Anxiety is what happens between now and then.  In other words, stay
in the here and now, which is the only reality, …”  Fritz Perls

So, here is a challenge:  Rather than place your desired change sometime in the future as a resolution, a wish, another task on your to do list, why not just do it?

Review your resolutions.  Pick one from the list and think about one action you can do NOW.

Choose a piece of fruit instead of that cookie and you are on your way to losing that weight.

Call your mom, a friend, a business contact instead of feeling badly that you didn’t.

Answer those newsy holiday cards one at a time rather than letting the pile nag you all week.

Want a change?  Act!

Check in with 2010 self every day of 2009.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Career Management.