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How to Achieve Your New Year's Resolutions

January 10, 2008

Have you made any resolutions for the New Year? Many people have. Unfortunately, most of the resolutions that people make each New Year never are achieved.

A celebrity was asked on New Year's Eve if he had made any resolutions for the upcoming year. "Yes, I always start the year with new resolutions," he said. Then he laughed. "And then in a few weeks I blow them off. I can't even remember what my resolutions were for last year."

When you make a resolution, you are making a decision and expressing it to yourself and perhaps others. An example is "I am going to exercise, eat better, lose weight, and get in shape this year."

Resolutions like this are a good starting point. The shortcoming, and the reason so many resolutions never are realized, is that a decision alone does not necessarily translate into a goal with a plan and actions to implement the plan and produce results.

Your goals are specific wants you are committed to pursuing and achieving at or during a specific time.

Your hopes, desires, dreams, aspirations, fantasies, intentions, wishful thoughts, and New Year's resolutions are not goals. They are only passing considerations until you transform your thoughts into clear and specific results, make the commitment to attain those results, set deadlines to achieve those results, and then develop and implement plans to produce those results.

It is only when you make a commitment and start taking action toward specific targets that your wants and resolutions begin to become your goals.

This is a simple concept, but many people do not understand it. They have hopes, dreams, and resolutions, and often speak of these wishful thoughts as though they are goals. However, a dream is just a dream. A resolution is just a resolution. Dreams and resolutions do not require a commitment, action, effort, results, or accountability. Goals on the other hand, are serious commitments that require action, effort, results, and accountability.

Five Steps to Success

If you want to attain your New Year's resolutions here are five steps to follow:

1. Transform your resolutions into clear and specific goals: Begin by breaking down your resolutions into sub- components and establishing clear and specific goals with due dates or deadlines for each of those elements. Instead of declaring an all-encompassing resolution like "I am going to exercise, eat better, lose weight, and get in shape this year," zero in on bite- sized pieces like, "I am going to exercise." Turn this resolution into a clear and specific goal and write it down. Your goal for this example might become, "I am going to have a rigorous one-hour cardio and weight workout at least three days a week every single week for the rest of my life beginning this week."
2. Develop a roadmap to success: Create a plan of action steps, habits, and behaviors you will adopt to achieve your goals. Here you would figure out an exercise schedule that works for you, the obstacles you will encounter to maintaining that schedule, and the steps you will take and the habits you will develop to get on that schedule and stay on it. For example, you might decide that you will exercise at the gym each Monday and Wednesday night from 7 pm to 8 pm, and every Saturday morning at 7:30 am. Then what you would do is set these times as firm appointments on your calendar and schedule.
3. Make a firm and unequivocal commitment: Make the commitment to keep your appointments with yourself and take whatever actions are required to get on your planned exercise schedule and stay on it no matter what. An important key to success is to create standard rituals and routines that you adopt as habits that will guide you to success.
4. Measure and track your progress: Set up a journal to record your progress. A record of your efforts and results will reinforce your commitment and keep you focused on your goal and motivated to achieve it. In this case your journal could be a simple notebook that you keep in your car or gym bag and use to record each visit to the gym along with a notation of how long you exercised, what you did to exercise, and how much you weighed at each visit.
5. Get back on track if you get off track: Do not beat yourself up and do not give up on your goal if you get off track for a little, or even a lot. Assess how you are doing at the beginning of each month and if you find you have gotten off track, evaluate what you must change and change it. Then start anew by getting right back on track to your goal and your plan.

The Moral of the Story

The moral of the story here is twofold.

First, it is never too late to start fresh and make progress. Regardless of where you are on your New Year's resolutions, you can get on track and achieve them.

Second, if you want to achieve something you have not achieved before, you are going to have to do something you have not done before. If you have made any New Year's resolutions to achieve results you have not been able to achieve in the past, it is time to transform those resolutions into goals with plans and commitments and start taking action to achieve them.

SlimWrite System for Health and Fitness Goals and Results

If any of your resolutions and goals relate to health, diet, exercise, and fitness, you may be interested in the SlimWrite (tm) System I created for establishing and managing healthy exercise and eating habits. This system works for me and others and it may be just what you need. To learn more, please visit our website.

Thank you for your interest in our work and for your business. Best wishes for a great 2008.

Sincerely,

Jim Ball
The Goals Institute

email: info@goalsinstitute.com
phone: 703-264-2000
web: www.goalpower.com