New Years Resolutions That Stick

As you prepare to wave goodbye to yet another year, a decade even (can you believe it’s almost a ten years since we ushered Y2K in?)  and greet 2010 with a sense of optimism and excitement on your journey to becoming Rich and Happy, I’m trusting you’ve got a goal or two up your sleeve for the New Year.

It may or may not be a New Years resolution per se. In fact, it may not even be written down, but I bet there’s something specific you’d like to achieve or change in the new year, right?

It could be to quit smoking, lose a bit of weight, run a 10k race, spend more time with people that are important to you (hint: that probably isn’t your boss) or even starting your own business. I don’t need to be a mind reader to know I’m almost certainly right because the end of year causes a great many people to take stock, and at least temporarily, reflect on their life.

I applaud your desire to make improvements, but the sad fact is statistically speaking you’re almost certainly doomed to failure.  In fact, so much so, that the original title of this post was going to be ‘Why New Years Resolutions Fail’

I’ve seen many figures quoted as to how many people succeed in making lasting change with new years resolutions and it’s never more than about 5% and quite honestly, those odds stink.

Then I thought to myself, hang on a minute, I’m writing for people that are on a Rich and Happy journey here, these aren’t the kind of folks that care about the odds or what other people do. These are go-getters of the highest order and people who defy the odds, not conform to them.

Hence the rather more appealing title you see before you today and my complete conviction that you will succeed in the challenges you set for yourself.

There’s an old saying that goes “If nothing changes, nothing changes” and it perfectly describes the situation for most people when setting new years resolutions.

Trying harder to do something that has normally failed is not as likely to yield success. To make lasting change you need to do adopt a different approach and Rich and Happy people get that.

By following the advice in this post I guarantee you’ll exponentially increase your likelihood of achieving your goals in 2010 and what’s not to love about that?

By the way, there is no way I can cover all the bases in this one post. So where necessary I have linked through to specific posts that may be helpful to you.

Write It Down

As a Life Coach I’m almost embarrassed to be typing this. Almost, but not quite that is. Written goals are far more likely to come to fruition than goals that are just floating round your head. Trust me on this one, there is enough scientific data to make it unequivocal and a sound investment of your time.

If you can’t spare 45 to 60 minutes to sit down and write down what it is that’s important to you in your life, then it can’t be that important, can it? This is an essential stage that Rich and Happy people always commit to, so block out the time in your planner and just do it!

Setting goals should be fun and not a chore. This is the rest of your life you’re planning out here, if you can’t get excited about it then you really need to do some serious navel gazing and shoe staring.

If you need help setting good goals that are likely to work, then read The Ultimate Goal Setting Post.

Change Your Identity

If you see yourself as a smoker, how difficult do you think it will be to quit smoking? If you see yourself as a fat person just trying to lose a bit of weight, how testing and difficult will that be?

The ability to change your identity or more accurately, never get attached to any one identity is one of the most underrated skills possessed by Rich and Happy people. It’s also one that you can acquire if you really want to.

Your identity is not your job, it’s not your dress size, it’s not your kids, it’s not your friends and (fortunately for me) it’s not your favorite sports team. All of those contribute to who you are as a person, but that’s all they do, just contribute to the much greater whole.

If I lose the ability to hear tomorrow life coaching would be a tad tricky. In fact in the short-term it would be more or less impossible. That would be a real downer because I love what I do.

I also realize that it could be taken off me at a moments notice and therefore if I attach my identity to being a coach, what happens then? Do I lose my identity; do I have to build another one or am I just, albeit temporarily, a nobody?

Of course the answer to all those questions is no. I’m still the same person I was before. Ok, I now have the TV volume a tad on the high side and I’ve taken to shouting a lot, but I’m still me. That’s because my job can never equal my identity.

If you’re trying to change a behavior the single biggest thing you can do to ensure success is to change your identity. Using weight loss as an example. If you refuse to see yourself as a fat person, but concentrate all your efforts into believing you are by nature a slim person temporarily in a fat persons body, what effect do you think that will have?

All of a sudden your internal image is directly in conflict with the vision you’re seeing in the mirror. In your mind you’re a healthy weight and that sets up cognitive dissonance between what you see and what you believe about yourself. Fortunately your unconscious mind doesn’t like cognitive dissonance and it will go to work on your behalf to help you meet your internal picture.

If you transform your identity and the way you view yourself, making changes will be far easier because you’ll not spending all your energy on fighting your own belief system.

There are a number of things you can do to help such as being aware of the language you use to describe yourself to others and to yourself. In other words, make it positive and goal focused. Never put yourself down to others or more importantly to yourself because it sends the wrong message to your unconscious.

Learn to believe in yourself. You have created your current identity so you can change it any time you want, just as long as you want to and believe you can.

Visualize

If you have read How To Be Rich and Happy you’ll not only know visualization works, but better still, how it works ! This is not woo-woo stuff it’s a scientifically tried and trusted method of helping make permanent successful change.

The following sequence is a section that was originally going to be in How To Be Rich and Happy, but ended up on the cutting room floor. Even so it explains how visualization works

Imagine walking home from a new job one day. You suddenly realize there is a meadow of long grass you could use to cut 20 minutes off your walk. (If you live in New York, you're going to need a great imagination for this one.)

The first time few times you walk through the meadow, you can barely see which way you had walked the previous day. However, after 10 or 20 times passing through the field, you can clearly see a pathway starting to form. After 100 times all the grass is worn away.

Then one day there's a farmer with a shotgun and large dog waiting for you at the end of the path. Now, let's presume our gun-toting friend is a big softie and he allows you to use that route as long as you want. What are the odds that the next time you walk through the meadow, you take a slightly different direction? Slim to none would be my guess. After all, you know this path works and you have a lovely, easy trail to navigate. Why risk taking another way?

On the other hand, if Farmer Giles starts taking pot shots at you and sportingly lets the dog try to shoot you as well before releasing it to sink its gnashers into your rear end, then you'll probably find a new way home once released from hospital. You opt against reacquainting yourself with Fido.

The next time you walk home, you spot another meadow further along the road. The same process begins to occur. Only this time, the original path you created in the last meadow has started to grow back. That is pretty much what happens when we form thoughts in our mind.

The first time we have a new thought; it is a weakling that gets sand kicked in its face by stronger thoughts and beliefs. Each time you re-think the thought, though, it grows in strength as the physical pathway becomes better defined. Not only that, but if the new thought is a belief that contradicts one that you currently hold, the older belief starts to atrophy and die.

This helps explain why we tend to have the same thoughts repeatedly and why people often have difficulty snapping negative loops of thinking. The pathway is established. It's just easier than trying to think about something new to form a new connection in the brain.

Visualization is an incredibly successful and simple way of speeding up the process. It fools the unconscious into believing that you have already done something before you have done it.

Review

Writing down goals is brilliant. Reviewing them on a regular basis is even better. Your goals should be dynamic and never set in stone. Check in with them to inspire, invigorate and motivate yourself.

Reframe any negative thoughts and use the fact that you’re not doing as well as you’d like as feedback, because that is exactly what it is. Without feedback either negative or positive we’d never know when to make changes and what changes to make.

Try and review where you are at least once a month or even weekly. Don’t go nuts though and become obsessed with measuring every parameter in sight. You’ll have good days and you’ll have bad days, that’s just how it is and it’s the overall long-term trend that is all that matters.

Have Fun

Like life, goal setting should be fun. If it isn’t, you’re either not doing it right or your dead. Rich and Happy people know that the more fun they are having the better life gets. So make your goal setting fun. Maybe you could set family goals, blog about it or even have a goal setting evening in with friends?

I am in the process of working out my goals for the next year and if you ask nicely I may even share them with you. In fact, I may even share them with you if you don't ask at all

Happy Holidays!