Best Christmas/New Year MP3 Gifts

Monday, January 10, 2005

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS--PART III

January 9, 2005

On top of your New Year Resolutions were some such things:

To get up at five.
To go for jogging.
To write for two hours.
Etc.

You were celebrating the Old Year Night till the early hours of New Year. You went to bed nearly at 2 a.m. You are fast asleep till 10 a.m. if not till mid-day. You have slight hang over. It is difficult even to get up what to talk of jogging or writing for two solid hours. Your New Year Resolutions have been broken on the very first day! The virginity of the resolutions has gone. They have lost their charm. In any case, you now realize, there is nothing new in the New Year. You are the same. The world is the same. Why bother with the New Year Resolutions!

To keep your New Year Resolutions and motivation, it is, therefore, very necessary to guard against the factors which kill them in the infancy itself. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Exceptions do make the rule and one swallow does not make a summer. New Year Resolutions are not “All or Nothing” affair. However, the New Year Resolutions are so dear to us, like a shining brand new car, that often if we fail to observe one of them, we get very disheartened and leave them totally. But that is the first thing we have to guard against. Already when we make New Year Resolutions we make them as if we are living in an ideal world. We have already crammed into our resolutions what no human being will be able to accomplish in ten years. So, don’t worry if some of them are broken on the very first night or very early in the year. What is important is your determination to keep as many New Year Resolutions as possible. Just keep at it. If jogging is broken for a week or month, restart it. If your diet has broken for a week or month, restart it. Come back to your New Year Resolutions.

2. So, you have re-committed yourself to your New Year Resolutions. Now is the time to revise them. Your New Year Resolutions were theoretical only. They lacked practical reality. You put too much into it. Even if you work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you would not be able to do it. You set too many diverse aims to accomplish—you want to excel at job, you want to be a good family member, you want to be the best baseball player, the best writer, the best singer, and so many other things. You want to go on a world tour, you want to learn music, you want to practice Yoga, etc. Well, your intentions are honorable, but not practical. Prune your list. If something is not going to be done any way, why not cut it from your list now. You can add it later, if you want to. Revise your list periodically.

3. You broke your resolution of going to gym early in the morning. Did you regret? Did your heart break? Did you loathe yourself whole day? If not, the resolution was not worth the paper it was written on. Your heart was not in it. It was not an obsession. See obsessive chatterboxes, smokers, drinkers. No harm making them your role models! Just change the activity. Your New Year Resolutions should be like obsessions.

4. Do you remember in your New Year Resolutions, in Three Greatest, you had put hard work, discipline, and self-control? Of all the great qualities, why you chose only these three? Because they are the most difficult. First, listen to a story. A man prayed to God for many years. The God became happy and asked him for a boon. The man asked for immortality. The God gave him a bottle of nectar and told him to drink it every morning and evening. The contents of the bottle will never finish. As long as he drank the nectar regularly he would not die. The man kept at the routine for some time. But then he got bored with it. One day he neglected to drink the nectar. He died the same day! To keep the routines is very difficult. But in life and the world all great things are routine—the sun rises routinely, the heart beats routinely, we breathe routinely, and so on. In fact other vital activities are also to be performed every day—drinking of water, taking food, and sleeping etc. On the other hand, if you are in the habit of doing something, like getting up early, you will keep on doing it happily and without any effort. This teaches us two great lessons: first, have discipline and self-control to keep your New Year Resolutions and, secondly, keep on repeating your affirmations and resolutions. They work only when you keep on repeating them. As mentioned above, even life depends on repetition of heart beat and respiration, and so many other things.

5. What is www? World Wide Web! What is Internet? Interconnected computers! In both of these the concept of connection is paramount. Everything is connected with everything, so to say. And this connection for web pages is through links. So, in your personal life also link. Link one thing with another and you will never fail to do it. If you decide to drink at least ten glasses of water per day, which you should for good health, link drinking of water with routine activities of day-to-day life—drink two glasses first thing early in the morning on getting up, one before breakfast, one before leaving for office, one on reaching office, one each after you go to bathroom, one a couple of hours after lunch, one before leaving for home, one on arriving at home, one after freshening up, one a couple of hours after super, one before retiring. You will easily drink a dozen of glasses of water this way. Link getting up early to playing a game, and you will not be able to even sleep in anticipation of next morning’s game!

6. Don’t put your resolutions to only in a computer file and forget all about it. Write the resolutions in a diary, on your desktop (StickIt software will do it. Get it at http://www.singerscreations.com/Files/SIFix.exe ), in your Note in Outlook or other program, in you screen saver, on your fridge, on the wall of your room, etc. If you are of shy type and don’t want others to know that you are in the self-improvement business (it is strange, a smoker is not embarrassed, but an adult man who want self-improvement is sometimes laughed at!).

7. Repeat New Year Resolutions on waking up, in your prayers, and before retiring. In this way you will remain focused. In this way, you will be ordering you subconscious also to work for you and create the circumstances which are optimum for the realization of your New Year Resolutions.

8. Get a support group. Work with your family. Have a circle of friends to support and encourage each other. Have a jogging group and you will manage to jog all the year round.

9. Subscribe to inspirational/motivational newsletter. Read books on the subject. Listen to audios or see videos on the subject.

10. Ultimately, it is not terribly important whether you keep your resolutions in their entirety exactly as they were written at the beginning of the year. What is important is that you work hard, be disciplined and self-controlled. With just a little focus, you will be going in the right direction.

BE HAPPY! BE SUCCESSFUL! BE HEALTHY!

With regards,

Yours sincerely,

Gus

(This concludes New Year Resolutions)

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