Achieve Your New Year's Resolution Now. Step One: Forget About New Year's

What's the Best Gift You Can Receive Next Holiday? How about your own success? As I write this, we are entering the holiday season, during which you will try to figure out the best gifts you can give friends and family, and they'll do the same for you. Odds are, the results will be less than awesome. Then, on January 1st, as the holiday season ends, you'll make a New Year's resolution to achieve the thing you REALLY wanted more than any of those gifts you got -- whether it's to lose weight, get fit, finish your novel or start a new business. Why not give yourself the gift of that success as your holiday gift to yourself? Here are five ways to help make it happen: 1. Forget New Year's The worst day to start a resolution may just be January 1st What condition are most of us in on January 1st? We're not just recovering from New Year's Eve, we're recovering from a whole holiday season of overindulgence. We're quite likely to have taken time off time from work (or enjoyed a slow time at the office), and now, in the beginning of January, bosses, clients and co-workers all expect us to buckle down and catch up. Our physical condition is likely to be at a low point, and our workload at a high point. Under these conditions, what's the likelihood of sticking to a brand-new resolution to spend lunchtime at the gym? Not good. Right now - as we head into the holiday season - may be the best possible time to start on a new resolution. The first reason this is true is the obvious one: if you're serious about accomplishing something, right now is always the time to start. Read on for other ways to use this time to give yourself the gift of success. 2. Don't Dig Yourself Into a Hole Before You Even Begin Put yourself on the starting line -- not ten paces behind Let's say you have a goal weight and you need to lose 20 pounds to reach it. You can start taking charge of your eating now, or you can wait until January 1st to begin, and need to lose 25 pounds to reach your goal, because you let yourself go over the holidays. Starting a weight loss resolution over the holidays doesn't mean you have to spend Thanksgiving with a bowl of lettuce while everyone else is enjoying turkey and sweet potato pie. Your goal for the holidays can be to maintain, not gain. You can start with the crucial first step of keeping a food diary - writing down everything you eat and its estimated calories. That act alone will prevent eating on autopilot. When you look at your record of what you've eaten before dinner, you may realize that it wouldn't be a great hardship to cut your entrée in half and save the rest for tomorrow. But this advice doesn't just apply to dieting. A goal of getting out of credit card debt will be a lot easier to reach if you haven't spent the holidays buying gifts with credit cards, for example. 3. Tell Everyone This is how resolutions become reality The holidays are a time for connecting with family and friends, of letting everyone know what you're up to. It is the perfect time to tell everyone about your resolution. Telling people about it makes it real. It forces you to think about how you're going to make it happen. It gives friends and family a chance to share experiences, make suggestions, and offer to help. Which brings us to the next step . . . 4. Put Support on Your Wish List The most valuable gift you receive may cost nothing If you want to make a real change in your life, tell the folks who get you holiday gifts that what you want this year is their support. The key here is to be very specific. You can tell your spouse that he can stop worrying about finding the perfect gift, as long as he pledges to watch the kids three times a week so you can go to the gym. As your children's gift to you, give them the task of ordering you to "do your homework" at a certain time each evening - whether your homework is working out, writing for your blog, or setting up your budget. What kid doesn't love giving their parent homework? For other friends and family, their gift to you can be to formally commit to being your support team, to whom you report your progress every week or even every day. You can use the free site My Mighty Team, www.mymightyteam.com, to create a support team dedicated to your goal who can track your process through blog posts, text messages, or email. 5. Use Your Down Time Relax, think about your life, and create an action plan The holiday season can be hectic. But it almost always provides you with more down time than you'll have in January. And it's time during which we're likely to be thinking about the big picture: How we want to be around to see our kids all grown up; how we want things to be a year from now; how sometimes, with luck and a lot of hard work, dreams can come true. Use this time. Curl up by the fire (or the Yule Log video) with a journal and write your action plan. Or if you're not ready for that, curl up by the laptop and start researching the possible steps of your action plan. If you're trying to build a new habit, start small (like five minutes of exercise) and add to it each day. Conclusion If you start now . . . By January 1st your resolution and your plan to accomplish it will be a part of your life. Your friends and family will all know about it, and will be supporting you in specific, concrete ways. You will have taken the time to research your goals, laid out an action plan, and started on the plan. While you're returning that polka dot scarf from Aunt Beatrice, you'll know you've already given yourself the best gift you could receive: a great chance at success.