As the first month of 2013 winds down, most new year’s resolutions will start to fall by the wayside. Everyone has good intentions but unless you are truly committed to change – or have a great coach! – most people fail miserably in keeping to their resolution list. Habit changing takes time and most people don’t stick with something long enough to have these intended new patterns embedded into their daily lives. It is one reason why most coaches insist on a minimum of six months of commitment from their clients because it takes at least that much time to truly get traction.
Many New Year’s resolutions fail because they require something external…a drive to the gym, purchase of unusual groceries, learning to use a piece of exercise equipment, or waiting to hear about a job change to meet financial or professional growth intentions. But there is one resolution that requires nothing that resides beyond our own bodies. It only requires something that good coaches practice and hopefully convey to their clients. That is something we refer to as “presence.” And if you are present, you can resolve to be grateful for what you have.
Start to focus on what has been found by behavioral researchers and even celebrities from Oprah to Deepak Chopra to be the key to a happy life…Gratitude! Positive psychology guru Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania has conducted research that shows the efficacy of gratitude in clinical studies, student populations, and broader adult populations. A simple exercise of writing down three things for which you are grateful every day has been found to have a positive impact on attitude, energy, and enthusiasm. Oprah credits maintaining a gratitude journal as being one of her most important success factors.
Keeping a gratitude journal has never been easier. If you have a smart phone, you have all the tools you need. There is a free app known as the “Gratitude Diary” that lets you record your thoughts every day or even immediately upon getting that feeling of gratitude. When you first get started, the big things like gratitude for your spouse, your home, or your health will easily be identified. But the real magic begins when you start to recognize even the smallest things for which to be grateful for. This is when you will truly shift into a gratitude mindset. The gratitude app will even remind you if nothing has been recorded for a couple days.
One of my clients began keeping a gratitude diary and shared his list with his friends and colleagues. Among the things he was grateful for were banana pudding, lawn service, egg nog, fitted sheets, cruise control, fried eggs, dogs, salad dressing, seat cushions, tubeless toothpaste, the smell of coffee, cloud technology, airline upgrades, pay-at-the-pump filling stations, breath mints, hash brown potatoes, ESPN, remote controls, online banking, 2% milk, antihistamines, antibiotics, Aunt Jemima syrup…you get the idea!
So do yourself a favor and simply resolve to be grateful in 2013 and beyond.
