Well, December 31^st is almost here.  It’s time to close the books on 2007.  That means it’s time for 2 things – Dick Clark’s Rocking New Years Eve and making New Year’s Resolutions.

I don’t have much to say about Dick Clark, but I do have something to say about making resolutions.  Making yearly promises to yourself about how and what you are going to change in your life (that you will eventually break) has become something of a given.  Many people seem to make the exact same resolutions every year.  Whether it’s to lose weight, stop smoking, or start writing the next great American novel, they dutifully resolve that this is the year that it will happen.

And it’s almost a given that they fall off of the path.  In fact, I think that resolutions have become a caricature of what real personal growth is all about.  There is almost a tacit understanding that the goals will remain unattained – just like last year.

I’d like to propose a new way of looking at resolutions.  One that might seem a little “soft” at first, but in the long-term will create powerful changes.  In this view of resolutions, you don’t look at the each resolution as an independent entity, but as a process that evolves every year.

There’s two parts to the process.  The first is to realize that all growth and development isn’t a fixed measure, but rather a relative comparison.  In order to appreciate and understand this, you can ask yourself a number of questions that help you gauge where you are now as a function of where you’ve been.  You can ask yourself a lot of different questions, but here are some to start you off:

• Am I happier now than I was a year ago?
• Do I take better care of myself now than a year ago?
• Am I more emotionally mature now?
• Am I carrying less “baggage” now?
• Am I healthier than I was a year ago?
• Do I forgive more now?
• Am I more hopeful, loving, peaceful, etc. now?

The seeds of powerful New Year’s Resolutions are in the answers to these questions.  The second half of the process is to take what you discover by asking yourself these questions and create resolutions that will help give you better answers next year. 

For example, let’s say that you realize that you don’t take better care of yourself now than a year ago; and a big part of that is that you're exercising less.  This has taken a toll on your health and your waistline.  When you resolve to exercise more you can see how this fits in to the overall picture of your life.  You aren’t picking an arbitrary weight loss goal; you are choosing to start doing activities that will enable you to answer the above questions with a resounding “Yes!’.  Instead of picking resolutions out of thin air, you find ones that follow a natural progression. 

This year, as you look at where you have been over the past year and where you are going in the next year, pick resolutions that will support the ongoing development of you as an individual.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions?