Being that the month of January has already come and gone I’m curious to know how your New Year’s resolutions are coming along. Have you started eating healthier? Saving more money? Getting out of debt? Going to the gym every day? Losing those 15 lbs? I hope you have accomplished these goals, and if not, I hope that you are still on track to do so.  

Unfortunately though, most of us will fall far short of our New Years resolutions. Tempted by the jelly donuts at work, we’ll postpone our healthy eating. We’ll raise the credit card limit and go buy a new flat screen TV for the spare bedroom and put our resolution to get out of debt on hold. And forget about exercise, we don’t really have time for that. I mean, c’mon we’re too busy! After all, we can always get to it later. No big deal, right?

Every year it’s the same cycle. For instance, we all know gym memberships sky rocket in January, as fitness centers become packed with people destined to burn the ‘holiday pounds’ and finally get into shape.  And as soon as March rolls around the crowds start to thin, and those New Year’s resolutions begin to fade away. This is the yearly trend.

But what happens to these people? Or, rather, what happens to their resolutions? Well, nothing happens actually. And that’s where the issue is. Those resolutions lay dormant until late November or December. Then we realize it’s time to get in shape for the following year. “Oh no! It’s November already!!” Yep. Now it’s time we get motivated all over again, rewrite our yearly ‘to-do’ list, and 2009’s resolutions turn into 2010’s resolutions. Déjà vu.

The reason that we fall short of our New Year’s resolutions is that we make a list of things To Do without making a list of things To Be.  We try to change our actions without changing our beliefs. To Do something different we have to change our actions; To Be something different we have to change our thoughts.

Instead of New Year’s Resolutions, we need to make NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTIONS.

The word resolution comes from resolve, which means to declare or decide. So, our New Years resolutions are our declarations or decisions for the upcoming or current year. Instead of resolutions, I suggest we start making revolutions. A revolution is a fundamental change in a way of thinking.

In order for us to reach our goals we have to make revolutions. And there’s no need for us to wait for a new calendar year in order to do this. We can do it any month, week, day, or moment we choose.

For example, here’s a brief personal story of one of my revolutions. When it came to my personal finances I use to have some poor habits. And sure, I made some resolutions to save more money, but I didn’t necessarily change my thoughts about my personal finances. Until one day I remember talking with some friends of mine and they were telling me how they were broke and had no money. I’m sure many of you can relate to being in this type of conversation. Of course, I had been in this type of conversation plenty of times before but this time was different. This time I had a revolution, which occurred when my friend mentioned he was broke. This time, I thought about what he said and realized that he said the same thing last year! Why was he broke today just like he was last year?…hmm…I thought about this for a moment.  Then I realized that he spent everything he earned instead of choosing to save. At that point, it occurred to me that being broke for many people (not all people) is a choice. Our problem isn’t the amount of money we have but rather our thoughts about our money.

That day, I chose to change my thoughts about my money. In order to do more saving and investing, I had to be a person that saved and invested. I had to become a student of personal finance. So, over the course of time, I began to gather information on the basics of saving, investing, and debt management/elimination through brochures, books, and articles, for instance.

Now, I’m not saying I’m Warren Buffet or that I’ve got money stacked to the ceiling right now. Not even close! If I do the right things with money over a long period of time then maybe one day I’ll be able to reach that point; no one knows for sure. But what I do know for sure is that we will NEVER have money stacked to the ceiling if we don’t start at the floor. And we start at the floor by changing our thoughts and making some revolutions!

Small revolutions over a long period of time lead to BIG changes. Take my example above. I made a decision that instead of spending my $50 every month I was going to save or invest my $50 every month. And with that decision I changed paths: from spender to saver/investor. And by changing my path, I changed my destination. It’s not about starting off saving $5000 a month. It’s about changing our thoughts about each dollar. Start small with whatever it is you’ve got, be it a little or be it a lot.

So, what are your New Year’s Revolutions? If you haven’t made any yet, it’s never too late to start! There’s no reason to wait to change the calendar to change our thoughts. We don’t need to get out of debt or lose 15 pounds to change our thoughts. All we need to do is change ourselves. We must ask ourselves, Who do we need to be? not just What do we need to do? Taking action on the answers to these questions will allow us to make some revolutions. New Year’s revolutions we can stick to!