Baby Steps

    Tomorrow is a new year.  A fresh start.  Have you thought about the goals you want to achieve in 2013?  If not, take some time and think about them.  Zig Ziglar talks about the wheel of life.  His idea is that there are seven areas that make up our lives: spiritual, physical, family, social, intellectual, financial, and career.  Think about each of these areas in your life.  Where would you like to see of them a year from now?  Five years from now?  The way to make that change happen is goal setting.  And a great way to goal set is baby steps.
     Fly Lady (who has written books and you can find her on the web too) talks about taking baby steps to get the chaos out of your life and house (Dave Ramsey does this with finances too).  She is always reminding people that your house didn't get a hot mess over night and it is not going to get better over night, no matter how much you want it to.  You have to take baby steps.  Do a little at a time.  If you don't and you try to clean your whole house in one crazy day, you will burn out and you won't keep it like that.  You need to do little things.  Then those little things add up.  They become habits and THAT friends is when the magic happens.  When you are more inclined than not to do the things you need to in order to get your house (or finances or life or or body or whatever) to the place you want it to be.  But it doesn't happen over night. 
     Let yourself take baby steps with your goals.  That is how you can accomplish the goals and not give up on them by mid-to-late February.  For example, I belong to the Y.  I am guessing that more people will be there this week and next and maybe all of January than I have ever seen there since I signed up in June.  But how many of those people will stick it out all year?  But when you try to work out like a crazy person for a month or six weeks to lose that 20 pounds and go on some bizarre diet of wheat grass and cheese (or whatever your weird diet is), you will probably burn out soon.  But if you remind yourself that you want to lose weight to look better and be healthy and that doesn't usually happen in just a month, that the action of going to the gym three times a week is good for your health and good for building your determination muscles too, I might see you at the Y in October.  :-)  You didn't lose the weight (or get a messy house or get your finances in a wreck or insert your problem here) overnight and you can't be upset with yourself for not fixing it over night.  Create small bite sized pieces to your goal and then figure out how to do those smaller things.
     If you are looking to clean up your house, visit www.flylady.net
     If you would like help cleaning up your finances, visit www.daveramsey.com
     If you would like a great place to work out, I really like the Y.
     If you need help with an eating plan, I really like www.weightwatchers.com
     Find people who know more than you do about a topic and get their advice.  As you can see from the list above, that's what I do all the time.  Find a friend who you can share your plan with, who can encourage you and keep you on track when you need it.  Have a productive 2013!!  Thanks for reading.  :-)