journal

1. Get support. Find a friend, or perhaps create a whole team, to support you in keeping your resolutions. Select a person or people who believe in you, believe in the importance of your goals, believe in your ability to achieve your goals, but also support you lovingly when you backslide. Establish a regular schedule for reporting your progress to your friend or the team.

2. Set interim goals, preferably daily goals. Often the short term goals are obvious. If your resolution is to write the first draft of a 50,000 word novel in a hundred days, it is clear what you need to do each day. However, if your goal were to find a loving and compatible lifetime partner in the next six months, you would need to create a detailed plan and establish a hierarchy of interim goals.

3. Keep a journal of your progress. Record your progress daily, whatever the day's results turn out to be. If your resolution is writing a novel, record the days you throw a whole chapter into the trash as well as the days you write nothing, or ten pages or five.

4. Reward yourself for each day's accomplishment. This does not mean to reward yourself by backsliding. Let the reward for keeping to your diet be granting yourself time to read a great book, or making a small purchase, NOT eating a piece of chocolate.

5. Love, honor, and respect yourself whatever you do or do not do.

There are times on the road to your goals that you will need to take some time to step back, reflect and assess where you are, where you’ve been, and how this is affecting where you want to go.

One way you can determine how you’re doing and where you have been is to journal. Not everyone is a journal-er, but I do think everyone could benefit. Journaling is a great way to track your progress, and that you do need to do. If you feel intimidated by a blank book that’s sold as a journal get over it, because it is a great way to keep track of your thoughts and be able to refer to the journal for ideas and brainstorms that were forgotten.

Just can't do it, consider an audio method by speaking into a tape recorder. If  you’re not a journal-er, keep track of your progress, ideas and setbacks in the form of a recording.

I personally like to reassess after achieving some part of my goal. There is usually a natural denouement that comes with an accomplishment a little break or time off, as it were. I use that time to consider what I’ve finished and how it fits in to my goals and success.

Reflect and Assess Your Success

Another time to reflect and consider is when you’ve hit an obstacle or road block. As you look at the obstacle in front of you, try to figure out where it came from and why you might not have seen it before you tripped over it and how you will move past this obstacle.

The first edition of Recovering The Self, a quarterly journal which explores the themes of recovery and healing through poetry, memoir, essays, fiction, humor, media reviews and psycho-education. Areas of concern include aging, disabilities, health, abuse recovery, trauma/PTSD, anxiety, and depression is now in print.

Contributors from five continents provide a mirror of the experience of peoples of all cultures and beliefs. The premier issue explores a number of areas of concern including:

· Resilience and trauma recovery
· Healing the inner child
· Journaling and grief
· Forgiveness
· Lyme Disease
· Fibromyalgia
· Substance abuse
· Military families
· Nature of gender
· Children and trauma
· and much more!