When it comes to upholding New Year’s resolutions, most of us disappoint ourselves. We run out of motivation, we let negative self-talk get to us, or we procrastinate and ignore the decisions we made.
In any kind of goal-setting, most people are fueled and ready to rock at the beginning, but then wear-out and fade off in the middle of the road. Personally, if I don’t implement the tips that I’m about to share with you, I do the same.
When that happens- when we don’t do what we said we were going to do- it’s not because of a lack of willpower or anything inherently wrong with our strength of character. Rather, it’s a lack of planning, strategy, and the application of helpful tips to make our life easier.
So, if you are someone who struggles with keeping New Year’s resolutions or sticking with goals and plans you set for yourself, don’t beat yourself up about it. Don’t attribute it to the lack of discipline, self control, or a weak-willed character.
It’s none of that. It’s simply a lack of strategy; a lack of understanding of how habits are built, of how to manage the human psyche and orient its efforts.
How, then, do you achieve your goals and stick with your New Year’s resolutions?
Well, first you get clear about your specific goals and vision (what is it exactly that you want or are trying to do). Then, you make a detailed plan of all the little daily steps that you must do to get there. After that, you find or create a system to hold you accountable along the way.
You will fail. You will fall. And so you have to reflect on why that was so and readjust your strategy as to not repeat that failure.
Lastly, every once in a while, you will feel unmotivated and tired. So, you will have to take the time to renew your motivation and recenter your mind on why you are doing this to begin with.
1. Be Specific About Your Goals
A focused and clear mind is an invincible mind, for it knows precisely what it’s after and allows no room for anything else to get in its way.
Vague ideas will forever remain ideas, nothing more, nothing less.
There is a lot of power that you can harness from clarity. Because indecisiveness wastes time, which yields to distraction, and that allows for procrastination, and then negative-self talk, ending in a shattered confidence in ones abilities.
Ill-defined goals are ambiguous, and thus, can’t be measured, tracked, or attained.
To avoid all of that, just take a few minutes at the beginning of the year to envision exactly what you want. Then write it down. And when you do, be specific and detailed. Write exact numbers, dates, and emotions.
2. Adopt a Detailed Strategy
What, then, after you have written out your specific goals?
You need to also write how to get there!
How do you expect yourself to get from A to B without a road-map when you’ve never been there before?!
It’s ridiculous how we expect ourselves to perform in a certain way without giving ourselves the proper resources to do so.
You need to write out a plan: little steps, milestones, and daily actions that you must do so that your goal would be reached after their completion.
You need to think about the things you struggle with the most in the process of making those changes. What are your biggest temptations? What do you blame to “get in your way” when you’re trying to build a better habit or break a bad one?
How do you plan on overcoming these things? What’s your strategy? When you face such temptations, how will you behave differently this time around?
If you don’t have answers to these questions, then guess what? When March rolls around and you’re faced with fatigue, a million excuses, and the same temptations, you will give into them like every other year. All because you did not think about how you will successfully face them from the start.
3. Create An Accountability System
For starters, this can be as simple as getting your best friend on-board with what you want to do this year. Let them know, so that you can have a little healthy pressure to keep you going when things suck, so as to not let them down.
I’m a big proponent of getting close family and friends on-board with our aspirations and resolutions. I mean, who else will want the best for us and encourage us and lift us up when we most need it? I don’t think I (or anyone else, for that matter) can achieve anything or do anything major on my own.
Accountability systems can also come in the form of apps, habit tracking journals, and paid professionals.
There is another form of accountability that is often overlooked, but that I want to slightly address here: self-accountability. It is being responsible to yourself for your own actions, and being committed to upholding your own decisions and resolutions.
I’m not gonna lie. This is the hardest of them all. It needs a whole lot of integrity and self-awareness. I recommend you start with the other ones first.
4. Reflect & Readjust
When you fail (because you will), treat yourself and the failure with utmost objectivity…like a faraway observer trying to figure out why a phenomenon occurred.
Analyze the situation without any discouragement or negativity. You are simply trying to understand what went wrong so that you can fix it! Science itself works that way, so how can we not?!
But that requires time. It requires a person who is serious and committed. To reflect is to meditate on your past actions. And that requires a kind of soberness and sincerity that most people aren’t willing to produce no matter what’s at stake.
5. Revisit Your Why
As you’re going through the year- failing here, picking yourself up there- you will start to get weary.
You will have both triumphs and tribulations. You will do many things well and you will also tweak your strategy many times.
That process can (and will) fatigue you. So, you best acknowledge that and have a solution ready for when you get there.
My personal solution is to revisit my “why.” My greatest cause of fatigue is a loss of focus and clarity. I lose sight of the reasons why I’m doing the things that I’m doing.
I don’t doubt that other people do, too. It’s so easy to forget the why when you’re in the “what” and trying to figure out the “how.”
Remember those very specific goals you wrote? Yup, it’s time to bring them out and re-read them or re-write them. It’s time to get your bi-monthly dose of purpose and intention.
I suggest you do it often before you hit that point of fatigue. Always think about how you can avoid disaster before its onset.
Alright, my friend, I hope that was helpful. I wish you all the best in 2021.