How to Set (and Keep) New Year’s Resolutions…A Greatness Perspective (Part 2 of 2)

Dec 10, 2019

Did you catch my post last week? I unpacked why New Year’s Resolutions are so often abandoned, shame-invoking and ineffective.

I’m not saying don’t set intentions. Looking forward, setting intentions and realizing your greatest goals is what we want! I just want you to be successful in 2020.

I’m going to share another perspective on our traditional New Year’s Resolutions with you. Something that you may find more helpful, so helpful in fact it doesn’t just help at New Year’s but all year long. You see, when we are setting process-oriented goals that allow us to take steps in the right direction, when we’re able to celebrate our successes along the way, and when we’re able to identify intentions that are based on what you most want and need, you are so much more likely to stick with them than traditional New Year’s Resolutions.

This is your opportunity to regroup and set our 2020 goals. Here’s a better way:

1. Reflect

The first thing that I suggest we do is, instead of setting our goals attached to New Year’s is to be able to reflect first. What have you achieved up to now? What was 2019 in terms of your successes? What surprised you (even accomplishments you didn’t set out)? What worked for the ones you intentionally strove for?

2. Assess

The next step is, ask yourself, what is still important to you? What parts of your life are you satisfied with – business/career, intimate relationships, kids/dependents, professional growth, leisure, health – and why are you more or less satisfied with each? What have you been ignoring that you’re no longer willing to ignore? What have you hyper-focused on that you’re needing to pull back on?

3. Learn

And that’s the third step, is to harness the lessons. What can you learn from where you’re at and what works for you? And keep asking why, why, why, why until you get to the root issue. This allows you to understand how not to replicate the same mistakes or to anticipate roadblocks and well as what motivates you most.

4. Look Ahead

The fourth step is to look ahead into 2020 as if it’s already happened. Picture yourself on December 31^st 2020 having achieved everything that’s important to you. What do you want to move toward and prioritize? What did success look like in 2020? Who noticed? How did this impact how you thought, felt, and spent your time?

The great thing about this future focus is that you can get crystal clear on what you most want and then reverse engineer it. What’s the thing that happened right before that big, beautiful vision of success that you have created? What happened before that? And before that? This process allows you to identify the tiniest possible steps to move toward your desired state so you see exactly how to get from A to Z.

 

5. Yearn

The final test. Do you yearn for it? Can you picture yourself doing it, and enjoying it? Will it bring you joy? Does it bring a smile to your face? So often I hear people set goals they don’t even want (or only want the outcome but not the steps to get there). If you don’t love it, you’ll leave it.

This RALLY approach to moving into your best 2020 activates your greatness. You’re not only more likely to be successful, but you’re also more likely to be successful in what matters to you most.

One final suggestion…Celebrate!

Celebrate your progress along the way and not just your final destination. Besides the fact you deserve it, you’ll be so much more likely to continue if you can imperfectly and incrementally make progress toward your intended destination. In fact, it’s not the outcome we should celebrate. It’s the tens to hundreds to thousands of steps and decisions and course corrections it took to get there.Now, if you would like some support, some help, some guidance to have that successful 2020, why don’t you reach out to me, because I have a really cool program that I think you would find incredibly valuable. Reach out to us!

Wishing you all a very safe and happy New Year in 2020.

Want to check out more resources about how you can set proper goals for 2020? Check out these articles:

• 10 Life Lessons for Your Younger Self
• Accelerating Your 5 Year Greatness Plan
• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work