New Years Resolutions Set you Up to Fail

How are you doing with all the great New Year’s resolutions you made this year? Are you still as inspired to succeed as you were when you made the commitments or promises to really do things differently this year? Remember how committed you felt when you made those promises to finally turn all your resolutions into your reality this time. In this article I will first tell you why you keep breaking your commitments with yourself every year and then explore ways of ensuring you get back on track and do in fact meet your commitments with yourself.

Expectations that everything will be clean sailing
We set ourselves up for failure by having completely unrealistic expectations, believing that everything will go according to plan and that we will never encounter any challenges along the way. This type of approach lures us into a false place where we see ourselves as either succeeding or failing. So when we encounter the first inevitable challenge or obstacle, we see the obstacle or challenge as failure and we lose our motivation to continue.

Challenges are an integral part of any success journey. Plan for, anticipate and welcome them. Encountering challenges is as inevitable as a balloon filed with helium, rising into the sky, when left untethered. As you can’t avoid challenges, make the shift today, to a positive place, where encountering challenges is expected and a necessary part of your success journey. Challenges are never a reason to give up.

Action Idea: Create a crystal clear picture in your mind of exactly what you want to achieve and turn this into your written down vision statement. This clarity of vision will allow you to make the shift to a more positive place, where success becomes a direction and not a destination. As you wake up every day with a clear direction and purpose, the inevitable challenges you will encounter, are no longer seen as obstacles that are in your way. They become an anticipated and necessary part of your success journey and will be seen as opportunities to learn, expand and grow. When you make this crucial shift, nothing can ever be as being in your way and a reason to give up. Everything is seen to be on your way and an opportunity to learn, expand or grow.

We are human and will have lapses

Any new goals that you set yourself require you to introduce new behaviours and routines into your life, if you want to achieve them. As you know any new behaviours or routines will require some level of discipline and commitment, to carry them out every day. The challenge you have is that, because you see things as either black or white. You are either succeeding or failing; you will see every minor lapse, where you do not do what you needed to do that day, as a major collapse. Nothing could be further from the truth, minor lapses are just part of the human experience, never reasons to give up.

A perfect example of this way of thinking is someone that is on a diet. The all or nothing type of thinking, where they feel that dieting, is almost a punitive measure, where they must deprive themselves all the time. They are either on the diet where they are depriving themselves or they are off the diet. Any small lapse where they may have enjoyed something sweet or broken their diet in anyway, is seen as a total collapse and so they give up and binge-eat. This way of thinking sees them resign themselves to failure at the first minor lapse, where they just give up and accept that they have broken their diet.

Action Idea: Minor lapses are inevitable and part of the success journey. You and every other super achiever that has ever lived, have this one trait in common. Everyone will have moments and even short periods where you will lapse back into former bad habits. This is just normal and part of the success journey, never a reason to give up. Next time you encounter a minor lapse, see the lapse as just that, MINOR. Don’t dwell on the minor lapse, focus your energy where it will serve you best and get back to the business of doing what you need to do to achieve your goals.

Introduce the four cornerstones for success – Plan, Do, Review and Improve

Plan

No building can ever be built without a clear and concise blue print. The same is true for your goals. The more detailed and concise your plans are, the better will be the result at the end.

DO

Nothing can or ever will happen without you acting daily to carry out your plan. This is the most basic part of the success journey, but unfortunately often the most neglected step.

Review

Whatever gets measured gets done. Unless you measure your progress daily and ensure that your actions are delivering the expected results, you may be working really hard, but the actions you are taking are not aligned with the outcome you want and so your efforts are wasted.

Improve

As you review your daily actions, some of them will be perfect and be delivering the results you want. Keep doing these and have the foresight and courage to change and improve all the actions that are delivering less than satisfactory results.

To finally make 2012 your year for success, it is time to accept that challenges and minor lapses are just part of the success journey and never a reason to give up. As soon as you have made this shift and you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve this year, introduce the four cornerstones of success into your daily routine and you have everything you need to make this your best year ever.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za