I bet you made some New Year’s resolutions.
Most of us did because resolve comes easily on December 31st.
But give it a few weeks and many of the resolutions you made might already be in disarray, compromised, or abandoned.
And the resolute determination to make this year the year that you stick to your resolutions has probably been forgotten altogether.
I’m not writing this to make you feel guilty over this abandonment.
Instead, it is about the real reasons resolutions and the determination to achieve them are lost, year after year, and how to change things so that this year you’ll get on track to systematically set and achieve new goals.
So here are 9 strategies to rescue them:
1. You can’t achieve new goals or make desired changes without allocating time to do so
One of the big reasons that resolutions never become reality is that no room is made for them in your daily schedule.
If your days are already full, and you resolve to get in a half hour a day on the treadmill or on your laptop writing that book, that half hour has to come from somewhere.
Something’s got to give!
You have to find something or things that you’re currently doing that you can cut some or time from.
To make this a better year you’ll have to do things differently to last year.
There are obviously some things you’re going to need to keep doing, some new things you’ll need to do and a bunch of things you’ll have to stop doing to make room for the new more productive activities.
2. Priorities should govern schedule, schedule shouldn’t govern priorities
Another mistake made by the vast majority of business owners and entrepreneurs is they operate like workers instead of bosses and leaders.
They turn up at work and then they let people, events and interruptions come at them all day and take control of their day.
To have a better year this year you’ll have to wrest control away from others’ priorities and be governed by your own priorities.
3. Resolutions aren’t resolutions without resolve
Only you can decide what really matters to you.
So don’t bother making resolutions to appease or satisfy others.
Be honest with yourself – that’s a prerequisite for success.
4. Resolutions require resources
Almost anything you decide to do, any change you decide to make, and any goal you set out to achieve requires new or different resources.
That might be a piece of home exercise equipment or different food in the cupboard, a private work environment outside the office, information, and people.
You aren’t really serious about a resolution unless you invest in and gather the required resources.
Sometimes investment motivates follow-through, too since you’ve expended time effort and money on it.
5. Daily progress
Take your goals, and your objectives and break them down into a timeline and to-do list for each day, from now to fruition.
Big results happen in baby steps.
Nothing gets done in occasional big leaps.
I finished my book last year, one hour a day, a handful of pages each day.
Here’s the goal and discipline that are guaranteed to move you closer to any goal each and every day: refuse to end any day without doing something, no matter how small, that moves you toward the goal!
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6. Who motivates the motivator?
As a businessperson, as an entrepreneur, and as a leader you may be doing a lot of motivating of others, but who motivates you?
For the most part, you need to create self-motivation with structure, as I mentioned in idea #5.
But you can also get into a coaching group, hire a business coach, or just pair up with a like-minded friend, so there’s somebody to hold you accountable, to report progress to, to get encouragement from.
Any professional sports coach will tell you: that measurement automatically improves performance, and measurement monitored by someone else further improves performance.
7. Build up to change
I’ve neglected going for my daily walk for a few months, now I’m going back to it.
I started a while ago with a goal of 30 minutes and I’m doing 30 minutes each day.
But if I had tried doing that out of the starting blocks, I would not have made it.
So, I’ve started with a measly 10 minutes a day for the first few days, 15 minutes a day for the next few weeks and built up to 30 minutes a day
So, say you resolve to get up an hour earlier every morning to work on some project.
You could start with 15 minutes for two weeks, then 20 minutes for two weeks, then 30 for a month, then 45 for two weeks.
8. It’s not too late to re-group!
You may already have let your resolutions slip away.
Doesn’t matter.
Today, tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest, block out a couple of hours, bolt the door, unplug the phone, and re-group.
Review the resolutions.
Pick one or two that mean the most, and apply the seven ideas I’ve just shared with you.
9. Don’t try and do it all on your own
Resolve weakens under pressure, under stress, when you feel your time is out of your control.
As I mentioned above it’s really hard to be successful on your own.
You need a coach, an unreasonable friend, and a mentor to hold you accountable.
And as a business coach to some of Australia’s leading entrepreneurs and businesspeople, that’s why I specialise in it.
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Why not make another New Year’s resolution and join our Mastermind group and get the advantage of having a coach on your side?
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