RETHINKING NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

- Contributing Writer, Beverly Coggins

January is a wonderful time to take stock, evaluate, and realign yourself. Do your activities reflect your passions and priorities? Do your work and leisure capitalize on your gifts? Are you being intentional about the legacy you want to leave your children and/or future generations?

Or are you bouncing through life like a pinball - rebounding off other people's goals and ambitions, unclear about your own missions in life?

Rethinking life is something you can do once every few years, once a year, or several times a year - depending upon how often your life has significant change or needs significant change. I like to get away to a place where I won't be disturbed. Sometimes I have gone to a friend's cabin, or to a hotel, or just isolated myself at home. Sometimes I go alone and other times my husband and I go together. We'll work separately, but then come together to work on those things we are committed to jointly.

However you do it, how often you do it - the important things is to do it! We don't want to echo Yogi Berra, "We're lost, but we're making great time!"

During these "rethinking times" I like to look at my passions, my priorities, my gifts and the legacy I want to leave my children and generations to come. I then compare my activities to see if they reflect these things that are most significant in my life. I make long-term and short-term goals in various areas of my life and schedule them into my life.

It is an appropriate time to eliminate activities I am no longer passionate about or that don't rank high enough on my priority list. It's a reality check if I discover I'm expecting myself to cram 30 hours into a 24-hour day!

The result? I'm intentionally spending my time doing those things that are most significant to me. I'm not at the mercy of others' agendas. And I'm living in reality. I only have so much time each day. I want to be intentional about the way I spend it.
An important key to maintaining your priorities: build in time each week to evaluate your schedule, tweak it if necessary and plan for next week. I like to create a master weekly plan that I can refer to each week when planning my week so I don't inadvertently leave something out.

Life can be busy and hectic, but you can have a sense of peace because you are living out your priorities and leaving an intentional legacy!

Beverly Coggins is a time management expert and coach for individuals who want to rethink their lives. She is also an organizing expert, speaker and author of the 1-2-3...Get Organized series. Her time management books offer step-by-step guides to rethinking life. They are available at http://www.1-2-3GetOrganized.com Her organizing blog is found at http://www.1-2-3GetOrganized.blogspot.com She may be contacted at Bev@1-2-3GetOrganized.com