How Your New Year’s Resolutions Can Succeed

December is full of promises to customers, staff, your family and yourself. You tell your team to commit to finishing projects for customers before the new year. You also show your team next year will be better in this way and that, and you tell your family not to worry they will get your undivided attention over the holidays. That’s a lot of promises, and not one of them is a resolution for the new year!

The holidays can not come around fast enough, but before you know it they’re gone and the new year is upon us so to ensure your resolutions succeed, you need to set them in place now and make your plan on how and when you can celebrate their success.

Plan to Succeed

Setting goals all the time, not just for the new year is a step in the right direction. Once you know what the goal is, write it down.

Did you know you’re 42% more likely to achieve a goal when you write it down? Inc. also says writing the goal down helps you work through what it is you want to make, and it’s this clarity that improves the likelihood of success.

25% of people abandon their new year’s resolutions within 7 days So where are they going wrong?

Not Taking It Seriously

Setting a resolution for the new year is just a bit of fun for many people when if it was taken more seriously, it could set them up for the entire year. If there was a real reward attached to the resolution, then achieving the goal gets a lot more interesting. Of course, if you’re working out how to reward yourself once you’ve achieved your goal, you’re already far ahead of the majority of people who commit to a resolution without a second thought.

Reward Success

All goals achieved can and should come with a reward as it incentivises and motivates the right focus, i.e. to keep with it until it’s complete. In a business environment it may be that your staff have committed to work based resolutions and you as the boss has committed to providing rewards which is a smart move, only your staff need to work out what the goal is and also what the reward should be. You can provide suggestions and boundaries, i.e. maximum value per reward but when your staff set the goal and the reward they’re more likely to achieve it.

Lead By Example

All successful people are self-driven, disciplined, have role models which maybe leaders in powerful positions. When leaders commit to a goal for themselves or their people, they work hard to achieve it any which way they can. Sometimes desire to be the best leads to unscrupulous behaviour.

The Russians have just been handed a four-year ban from all major sports events, as they took their goal in the wrong direction. Avoid shortcuts as there really are no shortcuts and no overnight successes. Therefore commit to the goal, and the time it will take to achieve it.

Even in adversity, remain true to your goal and visualise it’s a success, i.e. avoid giving up when hurdles come your way. As a leader, show your team, staff, family, how to stay focussed and on target for achievement.

Turn Your To-Do List Into Your Goals List

Writing down what you need to do for the day and ticking off each item as you complete it shows you know how to carry off your tasks (goals). Whatever you call them, goals, tasks, to-do items, resolutions, the process of writing them done and knowing when they’ve been achieved is the same.

Get into the habit of creating to-do lists and your bigger goals will also now be more attainable. Here is a quick list of how to set a goal that you will attain however long it takes.

SMART

• Specific – Know what it is you want to do and succeed with.
• Measurable – How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
• Achievable – Set a goal you know with some focus and time you can attain.
• Relevant – Know it’s a goal worth having and worth achieving.
• Time-bound – How long will the process take from when you set your goal to when you achieve it?