Last week, we discussed the importance of resolutions in our professional lives and how setting goals, objectives, and good workplace habits throughout the year can help ensure productivity and can help improve your professional image and reputation.
We all start out with genuinely good intentions, but how many New Year’s resolutions have already faded away? Here we are ten days into the year and getting up early to hit the gym is already getting cumbersome (or whatever habit your trying to incorporate into your routine). Why do we really do New Year’s resolutions? One of the primary reasons we are inclined to set new goals and start the year fresh is because we want to change a bad habit, start a new habit, or simply want something different for the New Year.
For the 2015 year, take a long look at 2014 as it pertains to your performance in the workplace. Start with your successes and victories. What did you do differently from at the start of the year versus the end of the year? Were you able to curb a snarky tongue, communicate expectations in a productive manner, or simply increase production?
After celebrating your successes, you can evaluate your “learning” opportunities. If you are calling them mistakes, but you took ownership and learned from them, you labeled them wrong. Mistakes are those items we don’t take ownership of and we don’t learn from. If you can look back over the course of the year and you have moved forward in some way (knowledge, personally, financially, professionally), then you are doing well.
If you made or want to make a New Year’s resolution, try not to not focus on a task or a project, but rather on changing your way of thinking. Your paradigm if you will. If you really you want to get in better shape, focus more on work, increase production, etc., change your thought patterns behind those goals in addition to reaching your measuring points. Changing your paradigm will change those goals from burdens to elations.
Remember, you only fail if you stop trying.
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