Winning at New Years Resolutions!

 

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed seeing in the new year, although I suspect for most, it may have been a little quieter than usual, given the current global pandemic!

Mine was certainly quiet, I ended the year in lock down and also self isolation awaiting Covid test results after developing a high temperature on new years eve, which just about sums up 2020 doesn't it?

Anyway, here is the obligatory New Year blog post, but as the title suggests I will be sharing ways of setting resolutions and winning instead of quitting!

In 2019 I began using personal development techniques on my goals and ever since I have been succeeding in smashing them consistently.

I'd recommend trying this approach if you are someone who always sets resolutions, fails to stay motivated and then quits after a few weeks because it might just work out better for you. The advantages to this approach are huge, and I find my success rate is so much higher since adopting it. When you actually sit down and think about it, we fail at so many more resolutions than we ever achieve and I think I have come to realise why! 

The goals we set as resolutions are big, bold, hard to reach and very short term. We then find ourselves feeling really upset and frustrated with ourselves when we don't achieve them, but in reality all we had ever done was set ourselves up to fail anyway, thanks to our inability to acknowledge just how huge the goal was in the first place and exactly what it would take to achieve it! 

With personal development I learned that in order to achieve a goal we need set a series of smaller, longer term goals that lead to the same end result but take us there more slowly and consistently.

Example:

(Resolution approach): I'm going to publish a book. 

(Personal development approach): I'm going to: 

-Research, 

-Plot, 

-Develop characters, 

-Draft,  

-Redraft,

-Edit, 

THEN publish a book. 

I'm sure from this you can see my point, the resolution statement completely fails to acknowledge how much time and work needs to go into achieving that that goal. It's a bold 6 word statement that sounds oh so easy, but I can guarantee it's not! Soon the person who stated this as a goal will feel like they are failing and lose confidence in their ability to achieve it, simply because they will feel like it is taking them way too long to achieve that goal and that they aren't getting anywhere. They'll lose motivation and quit. 

The personal development statement, however, takes into account everything that needs to happen in order to actually publish a book. As each stage gets completed the person can tick it off and begin to see that they are one stage closer to the end goal. Whilst initially writing the goal down in so many parts might make it seem huge, daunting and like there is a lot of work to do, at least this person has gone into it having given it the real consideration it deserves and they are more aware of the fact that it won't happen overnight. Seeing parts of the process get completed keeps them motivated though, and confident that they are on track to success. It keeps them consistent in taking action to actually see it through because they are regularly getting small wins along the way and they are seeing clear progress.

As another example think of dieting:

How many times have we all vowed a resolution to go on a diet and lose a stone? How many times do we actually make it past the end of January before quitting because we haven't got the results yet?

I know it sounds silly but we do this year in year out and never wake up the the fact that maybe, just maybe, we are setting ourselves up to fail by how we set the goal! 

At the end of January when we've only lost 4lbs we get upset, we feel like we've wasted our time and failed. Have we though? 4lb is actually over a quarter of the goal achieved but it doesn't feel like it because of how we've set the goal. But what if we had set the goal differently and had a series of smaller more achievable goals like losing 1 pound a week for 14 weeks? Suddenly Instead of "only losing 4 lousy lbs in January when I'm trying to lose a stone" we now see the real level of achievement and feel proud that we are perfectly on track and have lost 4lb the 4 weeks of January towards our goal of a stone and we are very motivated to continue!

Makes a lot of sense doesn't it? 

I hope you find this useful in future goal setting, I've found it life changing since I adopted this as my approach so maybe you will too!

Here's to a successful 2021.

H. xx