What’s the key to achieving your New Year’s resolutions? Here are my thoughts.
We’re several weeks into 2020, so let’s talk about our New Year’s resolutions.
Now is about the time that people’s New Year’s resolutions start to fail, but why do they fail at all? I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and today I’ll share my conclusions.
Resolutions fail for two reasons: 1) you weren’t properly motivated, and 2) we want instant gratification.
Reason #1: Lack of Clarity & Motivation
How did you set your goals for the year? Were they really meaningful to you? Motivation is funny; it changes daily based on how badly we want the goal.
Let me put it to you this way: If I asked you to dribble a basketball through a minefield for $100, would you do it? Almost certainly not. If I offered you $10,000, you might start thinking about it. If I offered you $1 million, you’d probably give it even more consideration. If I offered you $10 million, you might put a whole lot more thought into it.
There might be no amount of money that would motivate you to dribble a ball through a minefield, true, but what if I said that your child/spouse/sibling/friend was on the other side of the minefield with a tiger that was about to eat them, and the only way to save them was to dribble that ball through the minefield? To save the life of someone you loved, you just might actually try it.
“Giving up before you see results is a great way to never achieve your goals.”
Having a clear understanding of your goal and your motivation to achieve it is critical. Think about the goals you’ve set for yourself this year; why do you want to achieve them? Do you want it as much as you want to breathe?
Reason #2: Instant Gratification
Some goals are strenuous, like getting in better physical shape. You come home from the gym sore and tired, but you don’t seem like you’ve lost any weight or made any gains, and that might discourage you from keeping at it.
Giving up before you see results is a great way to never achieve your goals. If you’ve been eating fast food your entire life when you finally decide to hit the gym, going for just a couple weeks while drinking protein smoothies won’t put you on the road to better health. That takes a long, long time.
We win when we consistently and persistently do the tasks that lead to meeting our goals. Here’s a story about a person I admire who exemplifies this mindset:
His name was Will Sanborn; I ran cross-country with him in high school. I admire him because he came in last place every single race. I was an average to above-average cross-country runner, but I came from a small high school, so I always placed. It was easy for me to run because I always scored for the team.
When you consistently come in last, it’s hard to get up every day and run that race. However, Will did, and he got better and better each time he did. I still admire him to this day for keeping at it.
If you want to achieve your New Year’s resolutions, remember that it’s all about showing up consistently and doing small, incremental things to get better so you can achieve a goal that’s meaningful to you. I’ve got a whole list of goals I’m working on, and I hope you are too.
Sharing your goals can also help you achieve success, so feel free to reach out to me about what you’re striving for and how you’re working to get there. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you have. Here’s to your continued success in 2020!
