If you are thinking about committing to your New Year resolutions, you might want to start small and slow. The fact is that you are not going to suddenly be able to exercise daily if you haven’t exercised in a while. Things just don’t work that way, which is why most people don’t end up fulfilling any of their resolutions. After reading some blog posts on New Year Resolutions, I have come to three conclusions for improving my resolution ROI this year. First, I am only going to work on one resolution at a time and reassess my results every week. Second, I am going to set only three goals as my New Years Resolutions. I figure if I can just make three long lasting improvements, it would better than trying to do too much and get nothing. Third and last, I would get help and support from my friends and family. In the past, all I did was hope for the best and I ended with the worst. As a person, I need people to hold me accountable and to remind me of what I promised myself. Of course, there are also other steps involved in obtaining a successful resolution plan. Check out lifestyle and productivity blogs like www.zenhabits.net or google some sites on New Year Resolutions. Everyone will tell you that you have to break it into steps, just like the old Chinese proverb. You cannot ascend into heaven with just one step. (paraphrased and literally translated from Chinese to English)

Everyone has experienced times when their energy is exhausted and they just feel tired. The truth is that we are all going to run out of energy and motivation at some points in our lives. However, we always manage to regain that energy when we find new inspiration. For example, you can take my involvement with student organizations. At the beginning of the year, I was so excited about starting a student group and getting all these great projects going. As the quarter goes by, I see that group membership is not growing as much as I had hoped. I start getting problems from board members, general members, and other people involved with my student organization activities. When I try to fix those problems and to make the organization better, it takes a toll on my own personal and school time. The result is an unhappy and burnt out me. So what do I do to combat this? The only solution is to learn from mistakes and do things the smart way. I have to try to make the student organization work while not doing so much that I get burned. When I do get burned, I have to step back and wait until I regain my confidence. I focus on my school work and career search until I find new courage to work on my organization again. In many ways, my organization is like a business. The difference is you don’t get paid and people will always criticize for not being successful.

When was the last time you took a real assessment of your strengths and weaknesses? It was probably the last time you attended a workshop seminar where the presenter made you do it, right? The bottom line is everyone needs to take account of their strengths and weaknesses every now and then. Sometimes you would be surprised what has happened to you since the last time you had the time to think about yourself. Last night, I had a talk with my dad about what both of our strengths and weaknesses were. We commented back and forth, each giving a strength and weakness about the other person. My strengths were that I was very ambitious and motivated in my career. My weaknesses were that I was stubborn and lacked communication skills that came from socializing. From this experience, I realized that my weaknesses had been outweighing my strengths for the past two years. During my freshmen year, I was at the top of my game with a strong GPA and community involvement. However, as I became more involved, I spent less time on school work and my career search. All this resulted in coming short on my goals and becoming burnt out. Learning from that, I decided I would reduce my community involvement and spend more time on school work and my career search this upcoming year. It is never too late for a person to realize mistakes and to make a U-turn. You just need to know when and just do it.