Don’t Fail (Again) At Your New Years Resolutions

Well, its time to say goodbye to 2006 and howdy to 2007. This is that time of year when many people like to create a list of New Years resolutions - things to accomplish in the coming year. Many people are totally apathetic about it and don’t even create resolutions anymore. This is because they don’t know how to actually steer their actions to accomplish their goal, so instead are used to failing. People used to failing get apathetic and decide there is no point in creating goals anymore.

To those of you who hear about New Years resolutions and laugh because you see it as a futile attempt, let me speak to you for a bit here. New Years may be simply another year, a year older and a few more wrinkles. You’re not likely to feel any different the morning of January 1st then you do December 31st (leaving out those with a hangover, of course). Yes, it is an arbitrary day on the calendar. But, then again, everything that happens in life starts with a decision. If you don’t make the decision, nothing is going to happen. That much I can guarantee you. The New Year gives you a benchmark by which you can gauge your activity for the prior year and decide where you’re going in the next.

Why would you want to do that? Well, have you ever gone snorkeling? Many of our readers have, I’m sure. When you are snorkeling, your head is in the water and you are looking down at the bottom. As you are looking, you just kick along. If you don’t, every once in awhile, take your head above the water and get a look around, you might just run into something, somebody else, or get run over by a boat! You have no idea where you’re going unless you take a second to look. And most of the time you can’t judge direction very well by just looking down at the bottom.

If you are going through life, just living day by day, working till 5 or 6, then go home to eat, watch TV and go to bed - then your life is probably just a little too comfortable. If you are going to get anywhere in your life, its going to take hard work. Its going to take some moments of discomfort and inconvenience. For those of you whose life is very repetitive - do you want more for yourself? Do you want to have games, to see life as a game? Do you want to expand yourself, get into new things? Do you want to make more money? Have more fun? Or do you want to be sitting here a year from now doing the EXACT same thing you are doing right now? Those of you who are already doing something unique (running your own business, starting one, running a website), do you want to have the status quo be exactly the same one year from today?

The difference is a decision. It is a decision to change something and to make something happen. If you want to accomplish a certain goal, you must make it part of your thought process that it IS going to happen and you accept no less. Now, people out there like to write books trying to show you stupid gimmicks on this. There really is no gimmick to it. You can’t hold your mouth a certain way, perform some sequence, and magically get a decision and goal accomplished. It does come from you. Everybody reading this has accomplished something in their life which they KNEW they HAD to do. College students across the country study hard and graduate. It is hard work, but they know that if they don’t graduate, they’ll be flipping my burger for me. That gives them necessity and thus they make the decision. They study, get decent grades and graduate.

Necessity level is something which many people lack when it comes to goals. They sit there and justify in their heads why it is OK that they failed at their goal. Their life will continue OK if they don’t. You might want to increase your income or maybe lose a few pounds. But, you know that if that doesn’t happen, you’ll be fine. So, you might not work very hard to get it done. When there is a true necessity to get it done, you’ll move heaven and earth to accomplish a particular task. The fact that any of us can do that tells you RIGHT THERE the true power of a decision. We are all capable of getting damn near anything done as long as you KNOW it will get done. The possibility of failure is not one you even contemplate.

Getting it Done

OK, now that I’ve given you the soapbox speech, let me give a little advice on actually accomplishing your goals. As I said, the biggest reason people fail at their New Years resolution is apathy. They can’t really see the clear path to getting it done, they get lazy, then they start justifying why its OK not to get it done. Then they just stop trying. Every time you do this in your life, you are just piling more apathy onto the whole subject matter, making it more unlikely that you will accomplish those higher goals you’d like to achieve.

The clearest way out of apathy is to outline a series of actions for your goal which any fool can follow. It could be that a task seems so hard or large that you don’t even know where to start. Well, spend some time and break it down. You want to break that goal down into a series of smaller actions, each precisely written and doable so that you can accomplish in a small amount of time. Then, each action is confrontable and not some large undoable task.

Keeping this in mind, take each resolution you create for yourself for 2006 and break it down into a precise series of actions which need to be done to accomplish it. If, after doing that, any item on that list is still too big to accomplish, then break it down further into sub-tasks. You want to break it down to the point where each item is fully confrontable, precisely written in such a way that you can accomplish it in some finite amount of time and then mark it done. Ideally, the task would be such that you could put it on your day’s task list and get it done that day. If you do it in this way, and use this action item list as a guide over all of your days’ todo lists, then you will find that you are actually make headway on your goal.

Beingnesses

You might have resolutions such as “Be nicer to my friends” or “Be more efficient at work”. These are good and give you something to aim for. But, realize that these are not measurable things which can be done. Is there any point where you can look at “Be more efficient at work” and say “Alright, I’ve gotten that one done!”. No, there isn’t. As efficient as anyone ever is, they can always be better. So, when do you actually mark it accomplished? When you have something like this, you need to break it down into doable targets which, when done, would make you the way you want. You’re not going to BE anything without some DOing.

A Word on Discipline

Getting things done often comes down to discipline. As mentioned above, all of us can accomplish miracles when we’re under pressure and its necessary to get it done. Whether it be the boss breathing down your neck, creditors knocking on the door, staying out of trouble with the parents, these kinds of threats put a necessity level on getting it done. Its those goals where you don’t have that kind of influence which are harder to attain. You know that if you fail, everything will be fine. It is my position that failing affects people on a subconscience level over time, making them less happy and less productive. When you make a decision and you fail, you don’t like it. Failure sucks. You’re probably not going to be very confident if you know you fail alot. But, if you do set goals for yourself, actually accomplish them, you will not only respect yourself more, but others will respect you as well.

Discipline is that self-induced necessity level. It is that “Well, I know nobody else is going to hammer me for not getting this done, but I’ll hammer myself silly!”. It comes from within.

If it helps, you might want to work with a partner on this. Some people have a really hard time with self-disipline. However, if you work with somebody else, a person to whom you are accountable, it can help. It can be a loved one, a significant other, or a partner in business. In fact, you might even want to balance the flow and be their person to be accountable to. Now, I’m not saying that you beat their heads over if they don’t get a task done. However, knowing that each other has goals and both having the common goal of making headway on them, you guys can be accountable to each other. Give each other weekly reports (whether it just be over dinner or otherwise) on what they got done that week that was aimed at achieving a major goal. Share your resolutions with them and have them share their’s. This world is designed to be in pairs. Its hard to get things done when operating as an island in this society. For those who can generate a lot of horsepower on their own, that is great. For everybody else, you can create it by putting heads together. Two or more people can be working on totally different goals, but still help each other accomplish them.

Conclusion

That’s the end of my soapbox lesson on New Years resolutions. I hope some of you find it useful. And with that in mind, lets all of us make 2007 the most successful year so far.

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