How to make your New Year’s Resolutions a success.
It’s that time of the year again to start thinking about our New Year’s Resolutions. For most people 2020 hasn’t been the greatest year, so our Resolutions can be a great way to turn all negativity of the past few months into positive plans for upcoming year. Unfortunately, the plans we make for the new year have the tendency to fail. However, how can we turn our New Year’s Resolutions into a success and make 2021, twelve months full of growth and progress?
Analyzing the current situation
First of all, we should analyze the way in which we make our new years resolutions right now. Think about it. You might have already made some plans or set some goals for 2021. Did you already structure your path towards that goal?
You can probably see yourself in the mirror having the perfect summer body, growing your business or being reunited with a friend. We feel a lot of excitement thinking about the achievement of the goal. We think we will be happier once we achieve our goal. However, towards the end of January we already start skipping some work outs and eventually we give up, without achieving our goals.
What happens if we achieve our goals?
Hypothetically, if we actually do put in the work and we achieve those abs we have always wanted or we reach a million dollars in sales. What do we do after achieving our goal? Do we quit working out and building our business because we achieved the goal we have dreamed of and worked for. If we do that, next summer you won’t have any abs left to show on the beach and next years sales will probably be less than the magic million.
We focus too much on our goals.
By thinking about this hypothetical situation we can notice something:
We focus too much on the goal and give it too much value. We connect the moment of achieving the goal to a better and happier life. We feel emotions of excitement. Then when things don’t go as expected, we fail because this feeling of excitement slowly fades away and pain we need to go trough doesn’t seem to weigh up against reaching the finish line anymore. We don’t lose weight, we have trouble finding new clients or our time for a 5K run is even worse than yesterday. We start slacking, eating unhealthy, skipping the gym, we quite putting in those extra hours for our side-hustle, it is not even February yet and we already quit. So, we have to wait for next year to try again.
The first observation we can make is that we should stop focusing on our goals. Don’t put so much value on that goal and definitely stop connecting your happiness to that goal. But what should we focus on? Think about the following.
“Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going.”
The motivation part is the feeling of excitement you get from thinking about the possible future achievement. Seeing yourself in the best shape of your life, being reconnected with a family member that you hadn’t seen in ages. This vision and vision gives you a lot of adrenaline to go the gym and buy an expensive blender to make your green smoothies. Then this initial motivation slowly fades and the second part of the quote becomes immensely important to actually cross that finish line. Habit is what keeps you going.
Focus on the process and the habits that come with it.
What are these habits and how can we focus on them to make our new years resolutions work out?
The first step is to start feeling excitement about the process instead of the goal. Enjoy to workout and work on your business on a daily basis. You will get rid of this feeling of unhappiness because you will find your happiness in working towards your goal, the process.
You shouldn’t feel unhappy when you are not where you want to be, because there will always be something you want to have or get better at. You will never be where you want to be because human beings love to see growth and progress. We never want to stand still; we will always want to keep moving. In the beginning of your journey there might not be any progress, which might make it more difficult to continue the process. You need to trick your brain into seeing growth in order to keep the urge to quit as low as possible. So, you should feel satisfaction in creating and performing daily habits by seeing the building of these habits as growth. These habits that form your process will become your signal for growth. Next to this, you should trust the process. Because by trusting the process, you can accept that there might not always be a significant amount of growth. But you need to trust that all those small improvements and daily changes and habits will eventually compound in an amazing achievement.
If you focus on the process and all the habits that are part of it then it becomes attractive to keep going, because it becomes a part of who you are. I will be party of your daily life. It becomes your identity. You become the athlete or you become the business owner. Then quitting will feel like getting rid of your own personality and identity. Every time you commit to your habits, you will step towards this new identity and it will become harder and harder to quit. Eventually you will need more effort to quit than to keep going.
Life is a process.
Enjoying and trusting the process are one of the most important habits in order to reasonably achieve any goals. It might not be the perfect comparison but think about life as one long process towards dying peacefully. The difference from goals we set ourselves is that most of us aren’t excited to die, but we do all know death is inevitable and we would rather die feeling like we lived the greatest life we could have than regretting life. Life actually is one big process; one big journey. We don’t focus on dying peacefully and grateful, we focus on life itself and thus on the process. See this as an example on how to conquer the goals you set yourself. Focus on the journey instead of the finish line.
Stop dreaming and take action.
We usually day dream a lot about all the wonderful things we could do and achieve. They dreaming process is again, closely related to deciding where to put your focus, the goal or the journey. When we start fantasizing about our New Years Resolutions, we think about that ONE DAY when we call those old friends or can see an amazing physique when we look into the mirror. Again you will be relying too much on the idea that achieving your goal will make you happier. In the beginning of January the gyms are getting overcrowded and the initial motivation hits, but then it gets closely to February and people already regret that they bought the expensive blender and fall back into their unhealthy and bad habits.
“Change ONE DAY, into DAY ONE.”
If you love the process so much then start working out today, start setting up your side hustle today. Don’t wait. Then when 2021 starts, you are already way closer to who you want become, then if you would start when the whole world starts their journey towards their goal on the 1st of January.
Conclusion
In order to make your New Years Resolutions be a positive change in your life, do the following. Use the motivation and excitement to make today your DAY ONE and then fall in love with putting in the work and trust the process so you build those habits and that is what will keep you going. And don’t give up when it gets hard, because it will, but overcoming those moments of adversity will build your success. Because success equals not giving up.
“Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
