Ditch the New Year Resolutions

We all do it every year – New Year’s Eve we re-assess and decide that the next year is definitely going to be the one where we give up smoking/get fit/find our dream job etc. We may have tried previously, but this time it’s a real promise!

And then…by week three of January we have started to “loosen” our commitment and start justifying why it’s really not quite the right time to carry through on our resolutions. It’s too hot to be running, you’re too busy to look for a new role, the excuses continue….by February the earnest promises have fizzled…

An alternative is to set yourself a “theme” for the year. Have a think about where you can improve, what would make a real difference to your life and what can apply over multiple facets of your day-to-day. It should be a like a guiding philosophy or mantra that will continually steer you to back to what you want to achieve for the year.

For example, my theme for the year is “focus”. To me, this has multiple applications – it means dedicating myself to one task at a time and really concentrating on it, without being distracted by other demands. It means being in the moment, really practicing mindfulness and appreciating and enjoying every minute. It means determining my goals and being ruthless in the pursuit of them. And of course it filters down to individual projects or in my case – candidates and clients, and ensuring that I “focus” on delivering the absolute best outcome in every case.

The theme can take whatever shape works for you – it could be something a little more tangible such as “adventure”, “relationships” or “exploring” – or maybe it’s more emotion-focused such as “resilience”, “appreciate” or “strive”.



It’s an easy philosophy to apply to your career – it should ideally be something that can equally be applied in individual projects as well as encapsulating your attitude to your work.

And then hopefully at the end of 2017 you can reflect back and identify all the ways your theme has influenced your successes through the year …rather than really you're just never going to run that marathon!