Kick New Year's Resolutions to the curb. Write your vision instead!

It’s a New Year and a new decade! It’s also time to kick those New Years’ resolutions to the curb—you know they won’t stick anyway so it’s time for a new approach to making positive changes in your life and to have your best year and decade yet!

About 10 years ago, I was getting stuck in the same cycle that we all do. Starting the new year with all the best intentions but within about a month, I would revert to my comfort zone.  And like most people, my resolutions were a compilation of the usual topics; finances, relationship, health, etc. By working with my coach we discovered it wasn’t the topics that needed to change but rather my approach. She suggested that I write a vision statement. While most of us are familiar with the term as it is widely used in most businesses, we don't think about it in personal terms. A classic definition of vision found in the dictionary is:

“the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom”

So why not write a vision statement for yourself and your life she asked? With that, I wrote my first vision statement for Christine Shaw and started taking control over my life in a different way. Since I wrote that first vision statement 2010, I have written one every year since then and now my favorite part of each new year approaching is reviewing last year’s vision statement and taking pride in some of my accomplishments and enhancing it with the wisdom I gain each year of life. Now don’t get me wrong, life isn’t perfect, and you will face challenges along the way—I certainly have had my share over the past few years. However, when you are clear with the life you want to live and remain focused, it is remarkable what you can accomplish and how happy you can be within your life even during the imperfect or challenging times.

 Since putting this practice into place, I have enhanced the quality of my relationships with family and friends by carefully investing my time in people that are important to me, I’ve become a CEO of a media company in New York, I have put myself into a solid financial position, I am in good health, I have taken some amazing trips, in general have a fantastic quality of life and am a very happy person. I have also been able to make it through challenging times in a more productive way. During that same ten years, I lost most of my possessions through a fire in my building and had to rebuild my home, lost my vision in one eye due to a freak accident, lost my mom to brain cancer and the company I worked at for 18 years of my career was sold.  All these are very difficult situations, but I remained grounded, focused and had a wonderful support system to help me navigate through these life storms. 

So, as a new year and new decade approaches, I thought I would share my tips with you on writing a personal vision statement so you can craft yours and embark on the best decade of your life!

1.      The first step is the hardest. It is about getting honest with yourself and clear on the life you want. Start with this thought—at this time next year, in five years and in ten years’ time, what does happy look like for you? And I am not talking about just your job, I mean all of it—health, relationship, finance, career, family, hobbies, travel, anything that is important to your life. Be very clear and very specific. 

2.     Make a list of all the people that are important in your life that you want in your life for a long time and, of course your family and the relationships within your family that are most important to you.

3.     Make a list of what is most important to you and prioritize and within each category get very specific. For example: travel is important to me so every year I write a list of the places that I want to visit—the list has grown over the years and while I have not gone to every place, I have done a lot travel and by doing this, it makes me focus on this and actually plan trips and experiences which is more important to me than material things. 

4.     Career—if you are happy in your current situation, that is great. Use this to focus on how you can do your best job possible. Taking courses and learning new skills is one example. Alternatively, if you are looking to grow within your career or even change careers it is especially important that you focus on this. Start with what strengths you have, where do you see yourself going and what do you need to do to accomplish this. It could be networking, working with a career coach or a recruiter to help bring out the best in you so you are more confident in going for that promotion, applying for a new job or even changing careers altogether. Anything is possible with focus, determination and a plan!

5.     Once you are clear with steps 1-4, spend time writing small and achievable goals for each specific item you wrote down. Let’s take health—do you need to lose weight, or perhaps you just need to be more diligent about your healthcare. What steps do you need to take to make this happen? 

6.     Make an appointment with yourself every month as a recurring appointment on your calendar to check in on your goals. Do this on your smart phone to ensure you get a reminder. Set the time for 30 minutes and when you know you can have some quiet time and review the vision statement and evaluate what areas need more focus and what are you doing well at. This is also a good time to be honest in the areas that may need adjusting.

7.     Equally important to step 1 is making a list of people, things and habits that are blocking you from success. Do you spend too much time on social media, are you watching too much TV, are you spending hours of time with people and or activities that are not productive, do you have a negative narrative in your head about anything. Often, even with the best intention and most ambitious goals, we are not protective enough about our time. Time is the most important asset we have, yet we are often giving it away easily on bad habits, things or people that are not enhancing the overall quality of our life.

Remember the funny thing about life is you only get one life—so make it the life YOU want to live. Spend time with people you care about and love, have a career that doesn’t just pay the bills but makes you happy, spend free time doing things you enjoy doing, be financially responsible so you don’t create unnecessary stress in your life, take good care of yourself—being healthy will allow you to have a much higher quality of life than being unhealthy. 

Time is something we don’t get back, so I will leave you with this final thought—how will you feel if in a year from now, you have done nothing, made no changes—will you be happy?

Here’s to a New Year and New Decade!