In yesterdays post, New Years Resolutions Gone Bad, I shared with you my perspective on new years resolutions and why I don’t personally believe in them.

What I’d like to suggest you do instead is make New Years Promises…

The Power of Promises

Think about the times in your life you’ve made a promise to someone. More often then not, did you keep it or break it?

In my own experience, I’ve found promises to be very powerful: They’re like binding agreements with myself and the person I am making the promise to.

What if instead of setting goals, we made promises to ourself?

Personally, I believe it to be a very powerful method.

The Cause is You!

You know from New Years Resolutions Gone Bad how important your mindset and your subconscious is in achieving your goals. What that really boils down to is this:

‘Who you are and how you act and behave on a daily basis plays a vital role in the achievement of your goals.’

If we overlook the importance of improving ourselves from the inside out, then we are neglecting an essential part of goal setting.

Think about this: When a person merely sets a goal to lose weight, they are starting from the external source, not the internal. If instead they set the goal to develop and nurture the mindset that it will take to create consistent action to achieve their goal of losing weight, then they will be setting themselves up for success. This goes for any of your goals…

What do you think might happen in your life if you began your goals by making promises to yourself in regards to who you intend on becoming more of this year?

You see, the achievement of your goals is an effect. The cause begins with YOU!  Yourself! Who you are!!

So how about making a promise to yourself of who you intend on becoming and being more of this year?

My New Years Promises

Want some ideas? Need to see what I mean to fully understand? Here’s an example of what my New Years Promises are to myself:

• Practice more love, compassion, and understanding to my friends, family, and people I encounter on a daily basis.
• Acknowledge to myself everyday that I have a responsibility to positively impact the lives of those around me.
• Continually acknowledge to myself that I am in charge of how I respond to every situation.
• Cherish and appreciate all the love and support my family and friends provide me.
• Pursue my dreams with thunder and lighting!
• Keep my goals and targets in my line of sight everyday.
• Let go of excuses for not achieving or pursuing my targets, goals and dreams.
• Treat my body and mind with love & respect, listen to and acknowledge its needs on a daily basis, and do whatever I must to take great care of it.
• Donate 5-10% of my monthly income to a charity, foundation, or cause.
• Continue to entertain people I meet and hang out with and get them to laugh their asses off.
• Defy the Odds.
• Do whatever it takes to memorize this list of promises by next week, and be able to recite them with ease.

The focus on who you are and intend on becoming will undoubtedly be the cause for what you are able to do and accomplish this year.

Take Action Now:

Take some time and brainstorm the promises you would like to make to yourself for this year (or month! Customize it to your desires!).

Let your mind flow and just write out whatever comes to mind. Once you’ve done that, look through those ideas and select the ones that really resonate with you. You may want to come up with this in one hour, or sit on it for a few days. Listen to your intuition and let it guide you in creating these promises.

Once you’ve made those promises, respond to this post with what you are declaring to the world. post it on your Facebook and twitter updates, and post it on your websites.

Finally, if you feel this article has positively impacted you and will help another, please share it with them so they can experience similar ‘a-ha’s’ as you just have!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 8:44 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.