Are you on your way to meeting your most important resolutions or goals this year?

Or are you already off-track, or being held back in some way?

If you’re in the second group you’re far from alone.

Here are a few problems you may be facing, and things you can do to get back on track again:

Too many things to do?

To get to a better future, first you have to take care of current circumstances.

When you look at that to-do list, what’s the one thing you need to do before anything else can get done?

For now…just one.

And if it’s not easy to figure out what that one thing is, imagine looking back on this time a few months from now.

Imagine that everything worked out perfectly.

What did you do, where did you begin or what did you complete that took care of now and allowed you to move on to what’s next?

Success just seems to far away to see it…or believe it?

Break your big goal down into mini-milestones. (My dad used to describe these as “ends in view”).

Choose that first small milestone.

Work toward that.

Finish it.

And celebrate in an appropriate way.

Then take on the next small milestone or goal.

Create a string of successes along the way to the big finish, your ultimate goal.

Don’t worry about the past.

Don’t worry about the future.

Take care of now, and do it as well as you can.

Reaching your goal is too hard, now that you look at it more closely?

Step back for a second.

Is it really so hard? Or is it that parts of the path ahead are just (just!) unknown, at this point?

Intimidating or invigorating? How you experience a challenge depends on your perspective.

And if you are intimidated right now, is there training you can take, learning by experimenting that you can do, or someone you can talk with you has the experience that you don’t?

Perhaps there’s an advisor you can hire, or a colleague who’s mastered this challenge from whom you can learn before you go farther.

Reaching your goal is too easy…and you set your sights too low?

Maybe you’re secretly (or not so secretly) bored.

That causes its own problems, too. You never quite get organized, never quite have the “oomph” to get over even minor milestones when your energy and enthusiasm is low.

But before you draw this conclusion, look a little deeper.

Sometimes boredom masks a lack of understanding about what customers, colleagues or managers want you to deliver.

Look deeper before you declare boredom.

There may be important things you’re not looking for or seeing yet.

The truth is that you don’t really want this job?

There’s a lot of that going around, if you believe recent statistics.

One study showed that, of course, in an economy such as the one we’re still working through, people are thankful to have a job.

But at the same time, fewer than half of American workers are happy in the jobs they have.

And that includes executives and managers leading organizations.

If the unhappy camp includes you, and you’re one of many who plan to change jobs when the economy improves, what can you do now – where you are, at this time – to make yourself a more engaging hire when you apply for the next one?

How can you do a better job (yes, at this job you don’t like) for your customers?

For example:

- How can you make the work easier to do?

- How can you improve communications with people you work with and for?

- What do you control? (It’s probably more than you think, and less than you wish). Do what you can to improve that.

This is not a complete list of what might be holding you back, and what you can do if you’re now off track.

You will get solid footing soon.

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