Are you one of those people who make New Year’s Resolutions? If so, do you stick with them until they are resolved? New Year’s Resolutions are the most readily made and often the most easily broken promises. Allow me to share some statistics with you. About 40-45% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions every single year.
The following shows how many of these resolutions are maintained as time goes on:
- past the first week: 75%
- past 2 weeks: 71%
- after one month: 64%
- after 6 months: 46%
This means less than 20% of people who make New Year’s Resolutions actually see them through to the end. Success is not achieved by accident, it begins with a well-conceived plan. You can and will achieve more in the next year than you have in the past ten with a disciplined plan of action. If you are not willing to do EVERYTHING on your list, then you should just put the pen down and throw away the paper right now.
Steps that can help you with achieving your New Year’s Resolution(s):
- You need to deeply desire the goal or resolution. Napoleon Hill, in his landmark book, Think and Grow Rich, said it best. “The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.” So in order to achieve any goal, you must want it enough to remain committed. You must know your why’s and your why’s must deeply embedded in your soul’s core.
- Visualize yourself achieving the goal. Lee Iacocca said, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” And I know you heard the saying, ‘Fake it until you make it’. You must BECOME a different person in order to achieve your goal. You must be willing to let go of old, negative beliefs and incorporate new, positive ones.
- Make a plan for the path you need to follow to accomplish the goal. Create action steps to follow. Identify a critical path. The critical path defines the key accomplish-ments along the way, the most important steps that must happen for the goal to become a reality. Stephen Covey said, “All things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you’ve thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind.”
- Commit to achieving the goal by writing down the goal. Lee Iacocca said, “The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.” I agree completely. Write down the plan, the action steps and the critical path. Somehow, writing down the goal, the plan and a timeline sets events in motion that may not have happened otherwise.
- Establish times for checking your progress in your calendar system, whatever it is: a day planner, a PDA, a PDA phone or a hand written list. If you’re not making progress or feel stymied, don’t let your optimism keep you from accomplishing your goals. No matter how positively you are thinking, you need to assess your lack of progress. Adopt a pessimist’s viewpoint; something will and probably is, going to go wrong. Take a look at all of the factors that are keeping you from accomplishing your goal and develop a plan to overcome them. Add these plan steps to your calendar system as part of your goal achievement plan.
- Review your overall progress regularly. Make sure you are making progress. If you are not making progress, hire a coach, tap into the support of loved ones, analyze why the goal is not being met. Don’t allow the goal to just fade away. Figure out what you need to do to accomplish it. Check the prior five steps starting with an assessment of how deeply you actually want to achieve the goal.
To get started on the right track, pick up your free Success Principles report here.
To Your Success This Year and Every Year Afterwards,
J-licious
© Copyright 2009/12/30 Jacque Keil All Rights Reserved
