Five years ago my sister and I wrote down our resolutions and sealed them in an envelope. We decided to open them at the end of 2007 and bask in the glory of resolutions achieved. That 2007 celebration never did take place, and we never attempted to do that again! The problem is, I wrote down the same resolutions as I have every year…without truly examining why I always failed to achieve most resolutions in the past. The larger problem is not the topic of each resolution, but what success in each resolution actually meant. A common resolution for me was exercise more. “Exercise more” is not a clear enough definition to truly be a goal for me. And then other years when I broke the goal into “exercise 5 times a week” I would find myself doing well at first and then some event would take place, I would get off track and would realize that success in “exercising 5 times a week” was already not an option anymore…and quit.
My senior year in high school, my group of friends and I got
together and created a must-do list for ourselves. Some were little things, like drink a
“Yoo-Hoo”, and others were a little trickier for some: getting kissed on the
high jump mat on the track field. We
vowed at the beginning of the year that all 20+ tasks would be achieved by
graduation. It made the year so fulfilling
by checking off task after task. No, I
never did get kissed on the high jump mat on the track field, but I look back
over twenty years ago and can clearly remember so many of these other little
achievements. It made the year so
memorable.
Last year I decided to take my senior checklist to the next
level. Create a list of the little
things that I could do throughout the year that would make 2012 memorable. The items on my list did not require a lot of
time or money; most required very little of each.
Here is a small sampling of my personal list:
- Have a picnic out in the yard
- Bake cookies for the neighbors for no reason at all
- Send a letter to a long lost friend
Have fun creating your checklists!
Betsy
