Today marks the first full week of a New Year and a New Decade. It is an opportunity for a fresh start on whatever it is that we have wanted to accomplish with our health, faith, family, business, and finances. We just need to remember it is the beginning and not the end, so we need to pace ourselves. Don’t let what happened to your last year’s resolutions happen to this year’s resolutions. Be realistic and don’t burn out.

We all have these big audacious things we want to accomplish in life, but remember, if it is really worth doing, it is probably not going to get done in a day, in a week, or in a month.  If it could be done quickly, we probably would have already done it. For the most part, most New Year’s resolutions are life changes we need to make – not day changes, week changes, month changes, or year changes. We need to look at our life or our resolution like running a marathon. We cannot wake up one day after not running our entire life (or for years) and expect that we are going to knock out running 26 ½ miles.  But, if we start small, perhaps with something as easy as a 1 mile walk and build on it, anyone can do it. It is about committing ourselves to something we know we can maintain and building upward – not choosing something that is going to bury us.  It is also important that we have “mini goals” so we are experiencing success/winning along the way to that big audacious goal.

Using the metaphor of running a marathon – start with lightly jogging or walking one mile everyday and over a month or so, build that to lightly jogging 3 miles a day. Then over the next month build it to lightly jogging 3 to 5 miles, then 7 miles, then 10 miles, then…before you know it, if you are consistent, you will be ready to run that 26 ½ mile marathon. You will be accomplishing whatever your Big Audacious Goal is. The coolest thing is once you have that under your belt, can you can begin to imagine what next year’s resolution is going to look like – talk about big and audacious.

Easy does it…

Let’s make 2010 our best year yet!