How to keep New Year’s resolutions

The advent of the new year provides a great opportunity for renewal, rebirth and new beginnings, as well as a great time to reflect on personal rethinking, which is something more exciting than being content with the usual or making ends meet.

New Year new life

These days, many of us are thinking about formulating some resolutions for the coming year and trying to get better. It is a healthy habit, mentally and physically, and I am convinced that it improves personal well-being, cultivates a sense of self-improvement, and increases personal satisfaction far more than complacency.

New Year’s resolutions call for the achievement of new goals or the development of new virtues: those good habits that are achieved through repeated practice, in the same way that muscles are developed through physical training. Because virtues reflect positive qualities and best practices that are beneficial to our professional and personal lives, developing them can certainly help us become the best version of ourselves.

The study of virtue goes back to the philosophers of the ancient world, from Aristotle to Confucius, who emphasized the importance of cultivating personal habits that make the world a better place, such as prudence, compassion, patience, honesty, courage, kindness, hard work. and generosity.

Vision, patience and desire

Based on the experience of many of my colleagues in education, I would like to give some advice on developing these virtues:

1. The key decision is which good habits to focus on. Remember that the list of personal and professional virtues is long and varied. The virtues you practice depend on your aspirations and how they fit with your responsibilities or the values ​​of your organization. Some of the virtues traditionally associated with management include, for example, wisdom, fortitude, courage, temperance, fairness, and sociability.

2. Focus on practicing those virtues that are already close to you or that you practice regularly. In the old days, education consisted in correcting deviations standard behavior to overcome challenges limitations personal, such as teaching left-handers to write right right hand. Since then, the situation has improved, and diversity and uniqueness are now respected and appreciated. In this sense, an interesting contribution of positive psychology, whose goal is to determine how to develop talents and make life more fulfilling, has been to demonstrate that it is more productive and potentially more successful to focus on the strengths of a person than to manipulate weaknesses.

3. Identify two or three of your most significant strengths and try to excel in them. When diagnosing strengths, feedback from friends, mentors, or educators is often more helpful than introspection. Knowing your strengths can help you discover your personality and build your personal brand.

4. Track how well you are progressing in the practice of the virtues. Sometimes keeping a diary or keeping track of your personal development can help reinforce new practices. Benjamin Franklin’s candid account of his progress in acquiring his inherent virtues is a clear illustration of this approach and has been widely acclaimed. Also, journaling or reflecting on your experiences and ideas will help you better understand your life. It is worth remembering the saying of Socrates: “Life without an exam is not worth living.” It may be worth checking your own assessment with the opinions of people who know you well. Our view of ourselves is not as objective as we would like, and as business strategist Peter Drucker has pointed out, we tend to overestimate our strengths and underestimate our weaknesses.

5. Remember that the main goal of practicing the virtues is to become better, not just to increase your ego or become a better professional. Virtues only make sense to the extent that they relate to others and improve our lives.

Slow and good verses

Don’t be discouraged if after a few days you still don’t see a significant improvement in your goals or even take two steps back. It’s like losing weight: draconian diets will not lead to anything, their effect is short-lived. The main thing is perseverance and attitude.

This was stated by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. Life is breathalthough he was lucky enough to live to be 103 years old.

Finally, I wish everyone a happy new year, hoping that they will keep their promises and strengthen their virtues in the coming months.

The version of this article was originally posted on LinkedIn.

Santiago Yñiguez de Onsoño, President of IE University, I.E. University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.