3 Necessary Ingredients to Make (and Keep) Your New Year’s Resolution
Most of us get excited about the opportunity of a clean slate at the beginning of the year. So, with the new year being just around the corner, are you ready to hit the reset button and make 2019 your greatest year ever? Maybe, you are thinking of transformative breakthroughs in your work like a career upgrade or starting your own business. Or, perhaps, you want to prioritize your health or improve your marital relationship. But somehow there is this opposing force, an inner voice in your head that is sabotaging the enthusiasm. A voice of doubt that asks what’s going to make the next year different from this year?
Well, the fact of the matter is that almost 80% of new year’s resolutions fail by February! So, chances are that some of the goals you’re dreaming up for 2019 are really the same goals you had for 2018! You obviously had the best intentions, but somehow what you dreamed fizzled out in just a few weeks. Why is that? Why do our intentions and goals end up falling short?
In this article, I’m going to discuss the 3 necessary ingredients that will help you set the right goals and achieve them. Make sure you consider these ingredients when you set your goals and then you’ll see a dramatic difference in result.
1 — Set the Right Balance of Goals
One of the reasons that we drift away from our goals is because later we realize there are more important aspects of our lives that need attention. We just didn’t think of the limited time, willpower, and energy they all demand from us. So, it’s really important to analyze our work and life in 360 degrees and set the right balance of goals. We need to appreciate that life is multi-dimensional. Perhaps, we’re doing really well in some areas, and some other areas need serious attention. A stressed businessman who’s doing well financially might be in dire need of improving his family relationship or his health.
Stephen Covey, the renowned author, mentions that “although different words are used, most philosophies of life deal either explicitly or implicitly with four dimensions.”
- Physical — caring effectively for our physical body. How healthy is our body? How healthy do we eat? Do we get enough sleep/Relaxation?
- Mental — caring to learn and renew our minds. How often do we read or commit our time to learn? How often do we meditate or take time to reflect?
- Emotional — caring for our emotional health, and our heart. How are we doing in our relationships?
- Spiritual — This is our core, our center, our commitment to our value system. How aligned are our actions with our value system?
A self-assessment in each of these 4 dimensions helps you identify the gaps, and areas that need your attention most. This is not just about the avocational aspects of your life. Think of your vocational activities in the same 4 dimensions too. How aligned is your job with your values? Or, how mentally stimulating are your daily activities at work?
To get some inspiration on this topic, watch Robin Sharma as he talks about “The 4 Interior Empires Of History-Makers.”
2 — Build A Lasting Motivation
Behind every discipline, there is a motivation. You need to have the right motivation for your goals because at some point you are going to hit a wall. If you haven’t armed yourself with a clear motivation, you’ll give up. As soon as you face some friction or pressure, you’re going to ask yourself why did I commit to doing this in the first place? This may be obvious today as you’re hyped up and excited about the opportunity of the new year, but that’s not good enough. There must be a deeply rooted WHY behind your commitments. Why do you want to buy a house? Why do you want to change your job? You got to answer the question of WHY?
So, how do you find your WHYs? The answer lies in your personal value system. There is no right or wrong why’s. It’s personal and every individual has their own value system.
There is a great tool, called the Wheel of Life. It’s an effective way to map out your value system and ensure your goals are aligned with what YOU think is most important. We sometimes ‘want’ things in life without having really thought about our true values in life. So, start with WHY before you commit yourself to a goal.
In the above example, let’s say Jane has decided there are 8 values in her life: Career, Finances, Personal Growth, etc. Then, she rates her current level of satisfaction in each of these values on a scale of 1 to 10. The gray-shaded area clearly shows what is missing in her life. To ignite the fire within, and tap into her passion, to get the best motivation, her goals must be set around health and finances.
To map out your own Wheel of Life, take some time to reflect. What are YOUR values in life? Every individual has her own unique value system. Map out your value system and align your goals with your values. You’ll see a much-increased motivation when you start working on your goals.
3 — Plan For Success
If you don’t PLAN for success, you plan for failure! Simple as that. Planning is about giving your goals a time and a place to live in this world. Without a time and place, they’ll die. So, here is how to plan for your goals.
The first step is to translate your aspirational goals into actionable steps. For example, if your goal is to become healthier, you need to translate that into an action like ‘Exercise 3 times a week.’
Once you specify the required actions, the next critical step is to schedule your actions. In a study about ‘exercising’, scientists created three cohorts of people. In the first cohort (control group), they asked the subjects to track how often they exercise for the new few weeks. In the second group (the motivated group), they asked the same thing, but they also provided motivational material on how good exercise is for the health, etc. In the third group (intention), they got the same motivational material, but they did one thing differently. They were asked to fill out this sentence:
During the next week, I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on [DAY] at [TIME OF DAY] at/in [PLACE].
Here is what happened:
In the first group, only one of three people worked out. Compared to the first group, the motivational presentation did not have any impact and the second group ended up with the same results; i.e. two-thirds forgot about exercising as soon as they left. But here is the big idea: Nine out of ten of the third group who had a specific date and time for exercising achieved their goal. Planning increases the odds of success by 2 to 3 times!
The other benefit of scheduling your goals is that you can decide what you are going to NOT do in order to make time for your goals. Unlike other assets, we are spending 100% of our time. Every morning, we are given 24 hours and all these 24 hours WILL be spent. So, when you define new actionable steps towards your goals, you need to decide what are you going to replace them with. Perhaps, cut down on Netflix time? Or, maybe a serious commitment to ending your workday by 6 PM? Scheduling will help you make the right decisions.
SkedPal is a smart calendar app that intelligently schedules your to-do’s and goals. It saves you a huge amount of time in time blocking — one of the best ways of turning good intentions into action. It also helps you to be realistic and avoid planning fallacy.
