A new year is a common time for “new”. A new resolution. A new goal. A new year to attempt to acheive something in.
Year in, year out, I think you’d be crazy to set goals and not stick to them.
I think those who have real success from goals from a new years resolution essentially are goal orientated people, and have the motivation to stick to them and, even if it weren’t a new year, could have likely did the same goal anyway.
I was listening to Sea FM today, and it was revealed in a news release that Quitline expected to receive a sharp peak in smokers attempting to quit as part of new years resolutions.
I would love to see what sort of statistics follow on from that however, as in, whether there is growth in smoking and those who commit don’t quit, or a decline and those who do quit actually quit, and smoking uptake is dropping.
I know I quit smoking some time ago. It took me just 2 weeks of tolerating the urges to reach for a cigarette. And I did indeed pull away from it.
I actually started with the Zyban tablets, and I’ll tell you now, they’ll knock you around. They’ll turn your day upside down. You’ll go from enjoying a cigarette every so often, to the simple thought of being near a cigarette causing you to vomit, not just vomit either, but vomit black.
I endured it, thinking I would improve, but none the less, days after, the situation wasn’t improving, it was a very, very bad drug. That said, it still didn’t make smoking justified.
So, I moved on to patches a while after, when my partner committed to undertaking her own activity, and just 2 weeks on the smoking patches (I didn’t really have them on full time either), got me to quit.
My motivation wasn’t a new year, it wasn’t really anything else except the fact that I wanted to be able to have more time with my little one, and that I gained from. I wanted to be free from its stranglehold, I wanted the freedom from cigarettes provoking my thoughts in the morning, to being the last I reach for at night.
That said, new years resolutions, do they work for many people? I wonder if there is actually any real statistics on it? I’d ask the ABS, but I doubt their staticians specialise in New Year promises being broken.
I can’t think of any real resolutions for myself, but that said, I could use with some goals to get things moving. I would always love to be more free for my little one, I think he deserves the time with me.
That said, I also would love to finish up more projects this year, and have many of them ready to be self sufficient, requiring low maintenance from me, again, freeing my time up.
I do have one carefully placed goal I think for this year, and that is to finish my Diploma of IT, and in doing that, be prepared to choosing a path for 2009 and beyond.
Ideally, I should see a nice point in the operations for 2008, in a sense that the goal for 2009 is already decided before we come to it. Otherwise, it’ll be either choosing to grow a business from home, or back to work and getting the savings up, so when real estate prices crash, we can get building.
That said, nothing in the above is a real new years resolution to me, because they all don’t share a goal path, and none actually have milestone goals with exception of the Diploma.
I already know and plan to acheive the Diploma of IT this year, and assuming all goes well, come January 2009, I should well and truly be expecting it to arrive.
What do I do after there isn’t clear, and probably won’t be clear until mid / near end of the year.
I also do what is known as Damage Control, so if things don’t work out, I’ll do up 3 different resumes focusing on any number of differing skillsets and target a job in the local area, at least in doing that I can avoid transit to Sydney.
I’d love to see what others are doing as “New Years Resolutions”, not for anything related to me, but more to it, related to discovering what people aim for now a days. What do people aim for as a goal? To be debt free? To buy a house? To be a better person?. I must dig some of those out using Google. Should be interesting.
Oh, and the old WordPress blog here has had an update, so hopefully this doesn’t look too strange.Â
Enjoy!