Adults with ADD: Ditch Your New Year's Resolution

Season’s Greetings!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. You might be surprised to hear this from me, because I think my opinion differs from that of many other coaches. But as we approach 2010, I encourage you to forget about New Year’s Resolutions.

Have you already committed to going to the gym 3 times a week? Or to getting rid of all your clutter, or to never being late again? Maybe you committed to losing 20, 30, or 40 pounds?

Forget it.

That's right, forget your New Year's Resolutions! They don't work. Generally, people stick to their new behavior for 17 days before completely giving up. A drop in self-esteem always follows. You start telling yourself that it’s all your fault, you have no willpower, and you’ll never change.

Instead of making positive changes, you just end up beating yourself up. Again.

It’s not worth it! So why bother? There's a better way.

Instead of locking yourself into strict guidelines that you’ll eventually want to rebel against anyway, what if you resolved to focus on making improvements in one specific area that's important to you? I'm talking about creating a theme for the New Year.

When you have a theme in mind for yourself, you can continually focus on making improvements in that one area all year long. There are no rigid rules to follow, and no dents in self-esteem when you make a mistake--just a general commitment to remain focused on making improvements.

Taking it a step further, you can develop a simple question to use as your mantra throughout the year. This mantra will help you check in with yourself and ensure that you're focused on your theme.

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about. Feel free to use one of these for yourself in the New Year, or use the examples to help you create your own theme!

Theme: The Year of Self-care
Goal: To focus on taking really good care of myself, no matter what.
Mantra: Is what I am about to do in my BEST interest?

Theme: The Year of Time Management
Goal: To focus on improving my time management skills.
Mantra: Is this the BEST use of my time right now?

Theme: The Year of Declining Clutter
Goal: To focus on decreasing the clutter in my environment.
Mantra: Will this action (or purchase) DECREASE the clutter in life?

Theme: The Year of Better Health
Goal: To focus on making choices that will improve my general health and well being.
Mantra: Will this action lead to BETTER health or more happiness?

In all these examples, asking yourself a very simple 'yes or no' question will help you build awareness and make good decisions that are in line with your goals.

I've seen too many people damage their self-esteem by setting themselves up with unrealistic resolutions that they just couldn't follow through on. If you don't want to be one of them this year, consider ditching your New Year’s Resolution, and create a theme instead!

Would you like to share your theme for 2010? You can do so by leaving a comment below!

Comments

[Lyn Maravell]

I have decided to be physically beautiful. One must eat well and exercise to accomplish this. What looks good on the outside naturally, is healing cells on the inside too. And, did you ever notice how beautiful women with bad personalities get put up with because folks like looking at them? All this time I have been working to be a lovely person. No more! I'm just going to be pretty.

[brenda]

i love this idea of themes...my theme is to
"be true to myself" on the outside and the
inside... in the outer world to continue to
express my artistic creativity through my
equine and pet photography and to become
successful with this business..
on the inside: to focus on self love and
approval, especially accepting my a.d.d.
traits..choosing what is best for me regard-
less of what the so called "norm" is and
embracing my a.d.d.edness and being proud of myself and being a.d.d. brained...

[Nathan Jones]

I think I'll choose a year of focusing on establishing and maintaining a regular sleep pattern with sufficient sleep.

In theory, that's a component of your self-care theme (and for me it underpins the time management theme and the focus on work theme), but I find "self-care" too broad, so I'll try sleep initially. If that goes well, I can gradually add in the other things I want to work on.

[Lisa]

Theme: The Year of Saying NO
Goal: Give my time to me. No more giving up my goals to help someone achieve theirs. (I'll still help my kids, but it's the constant tug of everyone else.)
Mantra: I am important enough to say YES to me.

[Eva Wallace]

This is a beautiful post, Jennifer! I love the idea. I'm gonna have to think about it a bit, though. I'll let you know... :)

[Aaron]

My mantra is to be more honest with myself and others in though and in deed. So I'm not afriad to be me even if I'am vunerable in the way others. When I'm showing my add or my weakness or however you want to call it. Especially in my relationships with others. Because I have this fear that I will not be acceptable to others when they see my add cluter and short term interests come up. when they show up. So my question is "is this me do i really mean this or not?'" thanks,
happy new year 2010.

[Jacques]

I used to write in my planner in order to ask myself a kind of mantra like this :

" Am I doing what I'm supposed to do right now ? »

I like the idea of using words like «BEST » as suggested. It makes me think of a babysteps improvment , helping me to be realistic and not defeating myself.

I will find a reminder to get back and doing my BEST to stick to this useful habit. LOL

Thanks, HNY

Jacques