In one of my earlier posts I spoke about how close we are to the new year, its time to visit our New Year resolutions and see how we can achieve some of them in the last 45 days of the year.
The easiest way is to tell yourself that you will STOP making excuses.
STOPPING making excuses requires immense disciple, which I believe is now a very rare commodity or quality.
-Are you feeling tired all the time? Sleep earlier. Instead of going to sleep post 11 pm, may be wrap up earlier and hit the bed at 10 pm. See the difference.
-Is the person in the mirror out of shape? Exercise more and eat less. A blood test revealed to me that all my health parameters were fine, and there was no reason for me to be obese. My only problem then was my over-eating. So, all I had to do was eat sensibly and get about 45 mins of exercise every day.
-Don’t have enough time? Quit watching TV. Or, reduce the number of hours of TV or Netflix each day. You if watch one hour less of TV, then you can read that book or spare time for the online course that you have been wanting to do.
-Don’t have enough money? Stop wasting it. I am so convinced now that we end up buying unwanted clothes and accessories. Developing a minimalistic attitude and practising sustainable lifestyle will lead to huge savings and can be better for the planet as well.
-Does a task seem too complicated? Start small and try. Most people don’t start a lot of initiatives because of fear, self-doubt and the thought that something is difficult. How about developing a ‘progress is more important than perfection’ attitude. Let’s take baby steps. Let’s commit to doing 15 mins of something each day and keep it simple. That way, the bar is low enough to do it without thinking whether it is easy or difficult.
-Don’t have the knowledge? Learn and read a book or try picking up a new hobby. Learning has to be lifelong. How about trying to learn something new all the time. My daughter said she was learning morse code and I was wondering what was the point. But, she was having so much fun with it communicating in morse code with her friends and her neighbours.
We all know what we need to do, but most people still don’t do it. It’s hard to get out of our comfort some and it’s easier to just make excuses. Like the several motivational images and videos that we have seen in the past, ‘the magic is outside the comfort zone’.
About Author
Sandhya Reddy is a PCC Accredited Executive Coach and Leadership coach based in Bangalore, India. She is the Founder and Principal Coach at Chapter Two Coaching, a coaching consultancy that specializes in leadership development. She is a Certified Hogan Assessor and Coach. She has over 750+ hours of experience with coaching senior professionals. She has enabled personal transformation for over 1500+ individuals through coaching interventions, workshops, webinars and mentoring.
Chapter Two helps leaders in middle levels and senior levels engage better with their teams, peers and senior stakeholders. We help teams develop a growth and performance mindset, align better with the organizational culture and values and function more cohesively. We are also passionate about women’s leadership development and have developed a practice around it. We enable leadership development through 1:1 coaching interventions and through a set of curated leadership and personal transformational workshops.