It’s early February. Are you on track with your New Year’s Resolutions or feeling guilty for failing so quickly at sticking with your goals? Forget New Year’s resolutions.
After all, they’ve become an almost mindless activity, driven by the advertising community.
Let’s talk about Lifestyle Resolutions.
Is it important to plan for the year? Absolutely! The issue at hand? What are you planning for? Most important of all: What lifestyle do you want to live?
New Year’s resolutions and goals seem to escape us, because we are not taking the time to understand what matters most to us.
I’m talking about making time to go deep into our inner consciousness and asking ourselves what would happen if we reached a particular goal. What would it do for your lifestyle?
There are reasons why some people seem to have everything they want and others never reach their full potential. How we decide what we want and why have a great deal to do with success or failure..
Our feelings about our lives are interconnected with our values. When we are clear on our values and develop our goals around them, we experience a greater commitment to their attainment.
Value + Goals = Commitment
My intention is to shed light on what many of us have come to realize, in our work. Failure to achieve our New Year’s Resolutions and Goals begins with failure to understand why they really matter and design a process around them.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s keep the goal setting process to three simple steps:
Write down what you want to accomplish and why. The act of writing it down increases chances for success:
- Put in place technology that automates much of my work, to experience greater freedom.
- Do the things I know will help me reach my ideal weight of ____, so I can live a healthier lifestyle.
- Set aside time for creativity and fun. It’s how I decompress.
Are there barriers and how will you overcome them?
Ask yourself if there are any barriers to keep you from reaching each goal and how will you handle them. Are the barriers self-imposed or external?
Self-imposed barriers are more challenging than external ones. If you’ve done the work on why your goal means so much to you, there shouldn’t be any self-imposed barriers. Some may creep up, but you’ll be better at overcoming them. Work next on external barriers.
An example of an external barrier can be lack of support from a significant other. Perhaps helping them understand why a goal is so important for you and how it impacts your relationship in a positive way can help.
Go through each written goal, evaluate for barriers and how to overcome them. Advance preparation will ease the process of removing barriers.
What process will you put in place to accomplish each goal?
You’ve written your goals based on your values and what matters most to you. You’ve addressed the challenges (barriers) and how to overcome them. Now it’s time to put in place a process for each goal.
The word process may conjure up thoughts of extensive work. Not so.It’s simply a matter of writing out how you will get the goal done.
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) is not enough. Forget the acronym, keep it simple.
What do I need to do to accomplish my goal? Let’s take the first example of a written goal:
- Put in place technology that automates much of my work, to experience greater freedom.
Step 1: What do I want and why?
How will automating much of my work help me experience greater freedom?
- As of now, everything that needs to be done requires my presence. Automating more of the work, allows the business to run without me.
- I can monitor progress without working from my physical space.
- I can work from anywhere I want.
- Until the business runs without me, it can’t grow.
Step 2: What are the barriers?
- I’m the biggest barrier. I have all these hang ups about automation and removing the human component.
- I know what I want to automate and why. I’ve chosen the technology. I will begin by automating sales.
Step 3: What process will I put in place?
- To automate our sales, we need a system. My team has suggested software options. We will purchase the software, on February 16, 2XXX, and have my team get it up and running.
- I will become familiar with the aspects of the software that I need, in order to work remotely.
Each resolution has it’s own set of steps. More than given in the examples.
To succeed at accomplishing your New Year’s resolutions, identify the real reason why, the barriers,and put in place the process for getting them done.
There is much more time needed for this topic than you might be willing to spend here. Subscribe to my blog for ongoing discussions on this topic and more.
In the meantime, Forget the New Year’s Resolutions and go for Lifestyle Resolutions.