New Year's Resolutions Part 3

My last resolution is also the hardest.


Resolution 3: keep my resolutions.

I’m sure you can recall making a resolution, being very excited about it…for about a week, and then just lamenting the fact that you can’t keep your resolutions (if you can’t recall anything like this happening, then you need to be writing this, and not me).

Keeping my resolutions is a mixture of keeping the excitement, the determination, and the importance of my task at the forefront of my attention. Here’s my plan of attack for this year:

Read. A lot. Reading always keeps my attention focused. Two of my dominant strengths are input and learner. I love to read, and it helps me stay focused on the task at hand. It also keeps my subject close to my thoughts at all times.

Collect Blogs. I’m collecting quite a few leadership blogs on my igoogle page. I’m finding that over time I’m refining them more and more, so if you think that reading blogs about your resolutions will help you stay focused, here’s a couple of tips:

1. Look for blogs that are relevant to your resolution; in my case: leadership. If you want to get involved in some other blogs, then sort them in another file, another reader, or another page, so you can concentrate. Given the choice of reading a blog about work or about your favorite sports team, you know which one you’ll pick.

2. If you find you aren’t reading a blog or that it’s not helpful, delete it. It will only clog up your reader and make it less likely that you’ll wade through the bad stuff to get to the good.

3. Always be on the lookout for fresh content and new blogs.



Just Do It! Nothing trumps getting your hands dirty. If your goal is to start a leadership team, then the best way to keep your resolution is to start a leadership team. Tell other people about what you want to do. Enlist their help. You are less likely to drop the ball when it will be embarrassing to do so. Lay your groundwork, and prepare. The more you invest in a project, the more likely you’ll be to carry it off. This week is my jump off, and already I’m putting into play the foundations for expanding my leadership team, and I’m starting to organize a leadership seminar.

I pray that you carry through on your resolutions.

Question: If you have resolutions about leadership, what are they? How do you plan on carrying through with them?



Training Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,

Matt