It’s January 12. Do you know where your New Year’s resolutions are?

Hopefully, they’re not on that crumpled up piece of paper that I see in your circular file. Hopefully, they’re taped to your refrigerator, hanging from your mirror, or posted to your front door. If they’re not, and you’re feeling a little discouraged about your goal, take heart – you are not alone and it’s not too late.

Today, I was driving home from work and I realized that it was already January 12th. I was still fat; I was still a smoker, and I was no closer to any of my goals than I was on December 31, 2009. I started to feel badly about myself, chalking 2010 as another year of unrealized goals. Then, I realized something even more important than that: as long as I had breath, I had hope. It wasn’t too late and I refused to give up on myself.

If you’ve stalled out on your New Year’s resolutions like I have, don’t give up. The way I see it, we can either look at the last 12 days as wasted, piss on ourselves and throw a pity-party OR we can take a deep breath and get back to it.

Shift Your Paradigm

The hardest part of any self-improvement plan is finding a plan that works for you. For instance, one of my goals this year is to lose 40lbs. I’ve tried Weight Watchers in the past with some success, but the plan just doesn’t turn me on enough to stick with it. In fact, I’ve come to understand that no diet and exercise plan ever will. Instead, I have to focus on getting healthy (specifically, disease prevention), not losing weight.  It sounds like trickery or word-play, but my reality is that I have to commit to shifting my manner of thinking about losing the weight. Otherwise, I will never see and appreciate the trees (each individual pound that I lose). I will only see the forest.

Create an Anchor

When I think about my husband, my ridiculously cute puppy, my siblings and my parents, I feel even more empowered to meet my goals. My family is an anchor for self-improvement. I am not seeking to improve for them; I am seeking to improve because of them. The idea of being able to enjoy them for as long as possible in a healthy physical and mental state is a powerful motivator. So, one thing that I’ve done when struggling with my goals is to create an anchor.

Think about just one wonderful by-product of meeting one of your goals. It doesn’t have to be your family – it could be anything. For example, another one of my goals is to decrease our debt this year. A wonderful by-product of losing weight will be saving money. I won’t be spending money on fast-food lunches, premium coffees or junk food all day. So, as an anchor for losing weight, I can use something seemingly unrelated like decreasing debt. Each day that I save money by not spending it on fast food, I will be eating a healthier packed lunch. I can watch the money pile up while watching the pounds fall off. An anchor gives you something to latch on to when you need motivation. Let your anchor help to keep you focused on your goal.

Celebrate Each Victory

Imagine this scene: you go all day without smoking/drinking a soda pop/eating fast food. Then, someone really pisses you off. A cigarette/soda/fast food starts to sound pretty good. You buy cigarettes/soda/fast food to deal with the stress. Ahhh!

And then the guilt sets in. Now you’ve ruined everything. You’ll never change. You might as well keep smoking/drinking soda/eating candy.

It’s easy to throw yourself under the bus and give up quickly with one slip-up. Instead of beating yourself up over a slip-up that occurred in one hour, why not celebrate the eight hours that you made it sticking to your guns? Celebrate each small victory. Clap your hands. Stomp your feet. Sing at the top of your lungs: “I’m bad! I’m bad! Who’s bad?” Do whatever you need to do to celebrate  yourself. Build your self-confidence and just start again.

I believe in you.

We can do it.