January/February 2011 Spirituality
Make a Resolution List in The Next 10 Minutes
by Andrew Peterson
A good list can completely shift your perspective on any goal or problem. In the next 10 minutes, we’ll take list making to the extreme.
- Pick a goal. Keep it positive and make it long-term and seemingly impossible to achieve. For instance, I will never fight with my spouse again.
- Feel just how impossible it is. Start by taking a minute to try to talk yourself out of even trying to achieve it. Ask yourself, “What’s the point?” Then sigh and say to yourself, “So-and-so says I have to.”
- Make a broad outline. Ask yourself, “If it were somehow possible that I could never fight with my spouse again, what would it take?” Start with the broadest strokes and make a short list: we’d have to be able to communicate better, we’d have to learn to anticipate fights before they happened.
- Subdivide. Pick one item from the list and break it down. Make a list of three or four things you’d have to do to achieve it, like this: In order to anticipate fights before they happen, I need to be more aware of what triggers me into anger. To do that, I need to keep a record of every time I start to feel anger during a typical day. To do that, I’d need to have a pad of paper. To get it, I’d need to get up out of my chair.
- Take the first step. Now get up out of your chair. Then move on to the other steps. Now you are moving toward a future in which you will never again fight with your spouse.
— Andrew Peterson, author of 
The Next Ten Minutes: 51 Absurdly Simple Ways to Seize the Moment
, www.thenexttenminutes.com.