STOP FAILING NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS AND START SMASHING NEW YEARS GOALS
5min Read
If you are like 1.64 million Americans, you are starting to think about some New Years resolutions.
I want to help you to become part of the 7% of resolution setters who actually stuck to their goals!
Let me share you my secret (not so secret) method that I have been using for the past 7 years to set and smash my new years goals!
To be honest, there have been years where I didn’t even look at the goals I set for the entire year, and when I went to set new goals for the next year… I was super close to hitting all of them. I know it is cheesy, but I’m telling you: This Works!
So here is how I do it.
Step 1: Do some honest life evaluation. What areas of your life do you want to improve? A simple way to do this is an assessment on what I call the 4 seasons of life. Use the picture below. Look at each area and rank your quality/satisfaction in each area from 1 to 10 (1 being low quality/satisfaction and 10 being high quality/satisfaction). The areas where you score the lowest will need the most attention. Understand that extra attention to an area that is lower might come at a slightly lower score in a higher area in order to bring that low area up. So if you ranked your wealth at a 9 and health at a 4, your finances may need to come down to an 8 in order to invest into your health to make it a 7.
Step 2: Select 1 or 2 of the areas below that are the highest areas of improvement. Repeat the next steps in each main area you are going to improve.
Step 3: What is your desired outcome? By the end of the year, if you execute your plan, what is it that you want to accomplish? Do you want to be able to see some ab definition? Do you want to get out of debt? Do you want to finish a 10k run by August? Do you want to take more control over your emotions? Do you want to build stronger or new relationships? Be specific on things that will be gained, lost or achieved. Find a way to measure it. Make sure it is realistic. Set a timeline or deadline to finish.
Step 4: Success leaves clues. What behaviors does someone who has already achieved what you want to achieve do? In Tim Ferris’s book “Tools for Titans'' he reviewed over 100 world class performers in all areas of life. Over the 680 pages there were lots of common threads. What are ways your life can look more like the high performers in the area of life you want to improve? This step requires even more personal reflection and a little research. Below is a way to flow from the main categories above to more specific areas in your life. I personally recommend selecting 3-5 behaviors that you think you can start doing soon.
Step 5: Creating a plan with skills to smash your goals!
Before we jump further into this step, let's clearly define “skills” for our goal setting -1) the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance 2) a learned power of doing something competently. So for our goal setting we need to use what we have, or what we can have, to do something we are capable of. If you don’t have, or will not have, the ability to do something, or you are not capable of doing it, that skill will not help you reach your goal.
Now, create an