“Why be ordinary, like everyone else, when you can extraordinary?”
This is the question that I am reflecting on as we prepare to enter a new year. It is something that my late sister-in-law frequently said to inspire and motivate her own children and those that she taught.
For most of us a new year means making resolutions.
We promise to be healthier, kinder, better people. Whatever our resolutions, we declare that we are finally going to do something or be different in some way.
Like so many others I have been considering what my resolutions will be for 2016, but I have also been feeling reluctant to make any resolutions at all. Why? Because I have realised that I do not treat my resolutions in the same way that I do my goals. Perhaps that’s why it is so easy to discard them!
This year I do not want to make resolutions that I fail to follow through on by the time January comes to a close. I don’t want to be counted amongst the hundreds, thousand or millions who are content to make and then break their resolutions.
I see a resolution as a promise, a vow, a commitment that I make to myself.
I would never make a promise or commitment to someone else and then fail to follow through on it. But for some reason I seem to be sanguine about breaking the new year commitments that I make to myself. How crazy is that?
Year on year I utter some words about what I am going to do differently and more often than not when the spring comes around, I cannot even remember what those resolutions were.
So before I launch into making any rash promises about taking better care of myself, eating healthily, etc. etc. I have decided that I be extraordinary in 2016.
I will be extraordinary by following through on my commitment, on the promises that I make to myself. I will treat myself as I would my loved ones and my clients. I will not let myself down.
As the clock strikes midnight on 25th December 2015, I hope that you will join me in declaring 2016 to be your year for being extraordinary, for following through on the promises that you make to yourself.
Happy New Year