Resolutions Anyone?

Wednesday, 27 January 2010 21:10

Well, here we are at the end of the month of January 2010.  How are you making out with your resolutions.  Have you had a slip?  Are you feeling like a failure?  Did you just give up?  Too often we have an all or nothing attitude and the first time we sense failure we give up and walk away. For so many of the clients I have met, one missed deadline, one misplaced paper, one time late to an appointment and they give up thinking that things will never change or improve.

I have been working with several clients who have decided rather than thinking about "resolutions" that are made in January and are discarded in early to mid February, we are going to make a series of small changes that we will work on one at a time adding to our successes as we go.

For example, one client had a serious backlog of filing and wanted to get caught up on her own.  We found the best time for filing for her was late afternoon, so three afternoons per week she made appointments with herself and wrote them down. The most important step was putting these appointments down on her calendar. It meant she valued herself, her time and her need to get this job done.  By having a written appointment with herself, she would not forget to do what she had planned and wouldn't accidentally plan other things for this filing time.  The appointments were 30 minutes in length.  We decided that for this dull, boring chore that she could play whatever upbeat and energizing music would help the time pass.  Next, she would set a timer for 25 minutes and at the end of 25 minutes, she would stop and spend the last 5 minutes puttng the boxes away until the next session.  At the end of three weeks, the boxes of dreaded paper were either shredded, filed or sent on to their rightful owners.  This made a huge job a series of small repeatable steps that turned into a success!