Tag: goals

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Today, I Affirm

Today, I woke up and declared, “This is going to be a great day!” I didn’t have any particular reason for saying that. Today wasn’t special. Actually, it was quite ordinary. And that was the point.

One of my resolutions this year is to start each day with a positive affirmation. It’s a modest goal, but often small goals are the best. And given enough time and repetition, modest changes can have big results. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

What specifically am I hoping to achieve with starting my day with a positive affirmation? A few things:

  • Improve my mood and energy levels. If I say something positive out loud, my brain is more likely to believe that things are going in the right direction.
  • Remind myself to exercise, as Viktor Frankl puts it, “the last of the human freedoms” to choose my own attitude, no matter the circumstances, and take charge of how I approach life and the world.
  • Inspire myself to make the positive affirmation come true by putting in the work necessary to achieve my goals.
  • Prove that I can keep my promises to myself. I told myself I would start my day with a positive affirmation, and lo and behold, I am.

Not every day has to begin with the same affirmation. Some days I might start with “today, I will write a post for my blog” or “today, I will show more love to my dogs” or “today, I am grateful for my health and the health of my family.”

The specific words aren’t what’s important. What’s important is saying the words, with a positive spirit, every day, like I promised myself I would.

To help keep myself on track, I’ve set a recurring reminder on my iPhone to ping me at the same time every morning. If I missed my daily affirmation when I wake up, I have a second chance to recover. It’s a simple system, but it works.

I encourage you to work positive affirmations into your daily routine and fill your affirmations with your best aspirations for yourself. At worst, you’ve lost a few seconds of your day to a silly saying. At best, you’ve set yourself up for a happier, more fulfilling day, and if you string enough happy, fulfilling days together, that can add up to a pretty good life. No guarantees, of course, but it’s a gamble that seems like a good bet to me.

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New Year, New You: Small Scale Edition

Happy New Year! A new year means new beginnings, new hope, new energy, a clean slate, a fresh chance to accomplish goals and dreams. It’s a heady time. Mostly, however, it’s an illusion.

Most New Year’s resolutions fail. More than a third don’t even last a month. Why?

Life gets in the way. If accomplishing your goals were easy, you would have already achieved them. Something is in your way.

That something will be different for every person, but if you have goals undone or bad habits unbroken, your obstacle is somewhere in your life.

Willpower alone is almost never the problem, and so more willpower is rarely the solution. The problem is that for you to change, your life has to change, and most of us like our habits and routines, which is why we fell into them in the first place. Self-improvement can be a heavy lift.

What’s the solution? Start with smaller goals. How small? Tiny. Really tiny.

Like “I will floss my teeth.” Or, “I will drink a glass of water with breakfast.” Or, “I will walk for five minutes.”

To start making changes, it helps to pick something small, but tangible, so you’re sure you can do it.

Why small goals? Because every time you accomplish a goal—any goal, no matter how small—you prove to yourself that change is possible. You get a taste of success, and that taste will make you hungry for more. With more success comes more confidence and a greater ability to make more changes that don’t vanish after a month.

The old saying about the longest journeys isn’t that they begin with coasting into your destination. Journeys start with a single step. For most of us, the best first steps are small, concrete, and achievable within the confines of our lives as they are right now.

If your goal is easy enough, it’s not too hard to get started, and more importantly, it’s not too hard to keep going. And then, over time, as successes pile up, you can add more and more challenges and changes until you’re living the life you want to be living.

At least, that’s what I’m going to be trying this year. Small steps and incremental changes that I hope will yield big results when they have had time to germinate and grow.

So, if you’re going to give resolutions a go this year, think small. Small goals are often bigger than you think.