Back to the basics and making them measurable

Every year I would conscientious write down my new year resolutions. This year, 2007, I did not. I've thought about the list, its there in my mind's eyes and its the usual stuff but I just haven't gotten around to writing it out.

The theme for this year is the same as every year before: Living a balance lifestyle with equal emphasis on work and play.

At the end of every year, I would have a self-reflection session and each year I would not be able to proclaim that I've had a GREAT year and met my objectives. I can't seem to say that I've had a balanced lifestyle, its always been a very obvious focus on work instead of personal growth.

Each year I find that work is taking up so much of my time that I slowly become a very very very boring person. And then, at moments when I have that realization, I start to feel very pressured to balance it out. This creates additional stress. And when I tell myself to relax or to spend more time with my family/friends, I find out that I do not deeply enjoy doing those things which I should. Actually, I start to find myself feeling rather guilty when I'm not working 100% of every waking moment.

Its only the beginning of Jan and already for 2 mornings in a row, I couldn't get out of bed. I was just too exhausted to do it. When I wake, the first thing that come to my mind is work and when I thought about all the difficult things that is waiting to be managed, all i want to do is to dig deeper into my covers.

I acknowledge that this feeling, as bad as it may be, is already a great improvement from my yesteryears back in the previous company. I recall on several occasions that I had to literally crawl my way into the hotel bathroom because my legs were so weak but I just didn't have time form them to "wake up"!!

So today I decided to step back and take a deep breathe. No matter how much work I've got to do, duties I have to fulfill, responsibility I have to take up, people I have to spend time with. I'm going to do things one at a time.

For starters, I realized that I needed to take my mind off work, even if it were for a little while. (It has been a most strenous week for me in Vietnam emotionally). And so I pulled out little Vera's pictures and a novel by C.S Lewis Prince Caspian to just relax a little. I told myself that I'm going to focus on one thing at a time and block out everything else. After just an hour, I felt suitably recharged.

Eating my chocolate ice cream, I reflected on the Vietnam trip to assess why I was feeling the way I did and then realized that I never really was happy with my performance because I never thought it was good enough. During my performance review, my manager told me that all objectives should be made measurable and thinking back now I think it applies to my personal resolutions too!

So, I've decided that once again, I'm still going to write down my personal resolutions for this year. However, a change that I would make is to make them more measureable and realistic. Each measurable item I would determine a time and place for it and simply focus on one thing a time. Going back to basics....