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New Year’s Resolutions:
These Sites Can Help You Make—And Keep Them

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It’s that time of year again. During the first month of the year, the spotlight is on setting goals for the coming year. They’re called New Year’s resolutions and often these resolutions are done tongue-in-cheek with a just-under-the-radar consciousness that “no one keeps these things anyway.” But in reality, making quality New Year’s resolutions should be viewed as prime-time training for the goal setting—and keeping—that we should be doing throughout the year and throughout our lives.

With that in mind, I logged on to Google and keyed in “New Year’s Resolutions.” There were 541,000 results and some of them, at least, were sites that offer practical and useful guidance for making goals or resolutions for the New Year or at any time on life’s journey. Here are reviews on a few of them:

myGOALS.com (www.mygoals.com): The home page of this site announces that myGOALS.com “walks you through a simple, step-by-step goal-setting process for any goal, whether it’s short-term or long-term, easy or difficult, practical or lofty.” The site offers a step-by-step method that starts with goal selection and includes reminders and a personalized homepage where you can manage your goals and track your progress. Goal setting category sections help you set your goal. For example, spirituality-oriented goals are listed in the “Personal Growth & Interests” section. Let’s say you’ve decided on making meditation a central part of your spiritual practice in 2005. Click on the “Meditation” link in this section and start creating your own meditation “Goalplan.” Suggestions are given: “To remain completely at peace during my commute,” “To meditate for thirty minutes, three times a week.” However, the actual nuts and bolts of the plan are up to you (note: there are specific Goalplans like “To Become a Vegetarian,” “To Reduce Stress in My Life,” etc. that could be used to help design your meditation plan).

In order to take advantage of the site with its email reminders, etc., you have to become a member. There is a free 10-day trial and the cost of membership is reasonable at $5.95 per month (cancel anytime) or $49.95 if you sign up for a year. Membership benefits include unlimited site access, goal-setting tips and advice, unlimited Goalplans, and unlimited email reminders. User testimonials like “I’ve been using myGoals.com for a few months and I really appreciate it. I’ve used everything else out there and am sticking to your site. Thanks!” and “I wish I found this site before finishing my Master’s! Now I’m beginning my Ph.D. ... this is definitely part of my plan,” indicate that that this site just might be the ticket to making and keeping those New Year’s resolutions. Check it out and see if it might work for you.

P.S.: The New Year’s Resolution link on the homepage of this site reinforces the theme of this month’s column. I quote: “New Year’s is a time for reflection and planning about the coming year. Unfortunately, most resolutions utterly fail because people don’t know what to do next. The answer is to create a plan and then stick to it.”

MyMotivator (www.mymotivator.com): The goals of this site are similar to myGOALS.com. However, the overt commercial nature of the site really turned me off. The home page testimonial sounded great, but I couldn’t get a clear idea of how this site’s process works—except that I’d have to pay for it. Much of the site is devoted to their motivational and self-improvement tape library. The prices here are reasonable and 29 of them are free including titles like “30 Minutes to Success” and “7 Character Traits of Successful People.” The closest the site comes to spiritual goal-setting/keeping is in its “State of Mind” section. The tape library titles in this section include “Change Your Thinking/Change Your Life” (cost: $1.95) and “Gratitude” (free). When you click on your selection, you key in your email address and click the order button. Your selection will load and be available to you for 48 hours to listen to as often as you like. I wasn’t clear about how you actually receive help in setting up your goal plans at this site, but the tape library section is worth a visit.

The Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org): Of course, the HSUS site is not primarily devoted to New Year’s resolutions or goal-setting/keeping. However, their New Year’s resolution message provides food for thought for all of us, particularly those of us on the spiritual path. The “New Year’s Resolutions to Help Animals” section of the site reminds us that the annual ritual of setting New Year’s resolutions tends to focus on self-improvement: losing weight, starting an exercise program, reading more, developing your spiritual life. Then it suggests that we expand our vision beyond ourselves to consider those creatures who have little control over their fates: the world’s animals.

The section states: “If New Year’s resolutions are designed to have us reflect on our better natures—and to ponder the ideals of our existence—then what better time to reconnect with that powerful human resource called compassion? Compassion can take many forms, some of them intimate and others more indirect. When dealing with the animal kingdom, compassion is often several steps removed from the actual creature to whom the emotion is directed, but its collective impact can be as life-renewing as the proverbial removal of the thorn from the lion’s paw.”

More food for thought: The sentiment behind this lovely thought can be expanded beyond the animal kingdom to include children, the global community, and the environment. It reminds us that as we set our New Year’s resolutions or other life-time goals, we should focus on not only transforming ourselves but our communities and the world.

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Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Ms. Montgomery-Clifford has a Master's Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in June 2002 and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues in the Fall of 2002. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at 773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com.

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