Start Your New Year's Resolution Early and it Will Become Habit

Around this time of year we start to hear a lot of talk about New Year's Resolutions. Thanksgiving has passed, Christmas is around the corner and then New Years will be here with a bang. With each New Year, many of us make resolutions or agreements. These promises to ourselves often involve bad habits we want to quit or good habits we want to start. They may involve our job, school, family, friends or lifestyle in general.

Why not start thinking about your New Year's Resolution right now? Go ahead and plan it out today and let's get started. Don't wait until 2008 to make improvements in your life. If you start today, then your resolution will have time to become a habit and by the time the New Year is here, you will be much more likely to keep your resolution.

So how can you achieve this goal? First, start with just one resolution at a time. Some people form so many that it can be a daunting task to try to achieve them. Having too many goals at one time also makes it difficult to meet those goals. So start now with one resolution. Perhaps you want to narrow it down to the most important one or maybe the one you think will be the easiest to achieve.

Once you have your resolution, put it on paper. Limit it to one short phrase such as "Stop smoking" or "exercise every day". Then below this you can start branching out into the different ways you can achieve this goal. We will call this your Plan of Action. The Plan of Action will be the daily steps that you intend to take to help you reach your ultimate goal of the New Years Resolution.

For example, if your goal is to exercise every day, you might list some ways that you can get exercise every day. Going to the gym every day is not feasible for many people so don't list this. Only list things that are within your power to do such as "walk the dog", "Take stairs instead of elevator", etc.