To reach your goals, begin with baby steps

Just a few months ago we all started a brand new year with all the hope and dreams and the clean slate that we all need to turn over a new leaf.

We made New Year's resolutions and what did we do with them? Most of the time after just a few weeks, those resolutions become just another reason to feel guilty about our lack of discipline. Then we begin our constant barrage of negative comments in our head and out loud.

In January 1999, I made my last New Year's resolution. That was the year I decided I wanted to get organized. I set out on New Year's Day to do just that, "Get organized!" I began looking at all the other times in my life that I had tried to do this, only to get overwhelmed and ready to quit before I ever got started.

Why was I overwhelmed? Why did I feel the need to just give up? This is what we do best. It is our perfectionism that keeps us from ever implementing any of our elaborate plans. We are great planners and schemers.

Our hardest part of our plan is getting started. This is because we put so much time into making our plans perfect that we are worn out before we get one step toward the ultimate goal. We want to see it finished before we start. We would love to take a magic pill that would miraculously fix our disorganization. We have purchased every book that has been published on this topic. Our shelves are overflowing with these books, yet they never seem help us.

We just expect that having the book is going to "fix" us. Who said that we had to read it and do something with the words to see any results?

This is where I can come to your rescue. If you think about it, every book on organizing your life has some good points. The problem is in how we implement what we learned when we read it. For most of us, we try to do it all at once and get overwhelmed and, as we say in the south, "throw the baby out with the bath water!"

We know we need to be more organized but we just want a starting place. We need to feel good about ourselves at the same time and we need to know that we are not alone. It is when we don't see any accomplishments that we get discouraged, and out the baby goes.

I want to help you save the baby from being tossed out in every aspect of your life. Let's look at those New Year's resolutions we have tossed out: exercise, lose weight, save money, get organized, stop smoking and quit drinking.