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Have you earnestly sworn to lose that spare tyre, only to gorge on chocolate once Valentine’s Day rolls around? Well you’re not alone. More than 75% of people who make New Year’s resolutions fail!

Nearly all of us make the same mistakes when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, which practically guarantees we’ll fail miserably.  But if you’ve fallen down one step, don’t throw yourself down the whole staircase, keep on track with these 7 failsafe tips.  

1. Be Specific

According to James Holden, Executive Leadership Master Coach the number one NYR is ‘I just want to feel happy’.

Quite often, the driver behind the statement of ‘I just want to feel happy’ is so much more: more friends, more money, more fun, a more loving partner, a better job, a personality change… Instead, ask yourself ‘what do you not want’ and listen carefully.  Then, using this, focus on what you DO want.

2. Don’t aim too high or low

People that are optimistically ambitious about their abilities to succeed often charge at their objective with full speed, only to fall flat on their face… and usually early on in their quest for success.  Worse yet, some people refuse to believe that they truly deserve their dream and simply give up. So choose carefully what you believe you can or cannot do, and by the time you have put in the personal effort in to achieve your New Year’s Resolution, you will really feel like you do deserve it.

3. Make an absolute commitment

When it comes to the crunch time of taking action and putting in the hard yards to get what you want, not everyone is prepared to do what it takes. It is no coincidence that the rewards of success and commitment always march along, hand in hand. The opposite is also true: Fail to be committed: Fail to be successful.

4. Inconsistent in action taken

Even if you are committed to achieving something, it will take a good deal longer to achieve your outcome without some form of constant and consistently applied action.  Instead, give yourself the odd day off but by and large stick to your plan and you will get there.

5. Avoid competing interests

This occurs when a person’s lifestyle choices do not support their desired outcome. For some people, there will always be a list of reasons, justifications or excuses as to why they do not do what they say they will do - this is what psychologists refer to as operating from a ‘victimhood mentality’. What this means is that no responsibility is being taken for the situation the person finds themselves in. So, if you find that you are lacking the oomph to stick with your resolution, then you need to align your attention to your intended outcome i.e what you want.

6. It is not within their power or control to achieve

You need to be the captain of your ship or you will very quickly find your dream veering off course - success will be far less likely, if not impossible to achieve if the dream is outside of your control.

Take for example someone who wants a better relationship with his or her partner. If this involves their partner changing, the dream could easily be frustrated, despite valiant efforts at personal development on their behalf.  Instead, re-define your New Year’s Resolution so that it is within your power to control the outcome.

7. Overwhelm, frustration and impatience get in the way

We now live in an age of great expectations. We are so used to things happening fast, that we have come to place often-ridiculous expectations on our selves and others. For many people, having put in the effort to create the necessary inertia, they struggle with the ongoing effort to keep the momentum going. Before they know it, the enjoyment factor has gone and it has suddenly become all too hard. Is it little wonder by the end of January so many people have thrown in the towel and given up?

Reality check: getting overwhelmed, impatient or frustrated by the gap between what is currently happening in your life and the way you would like your life to be is completely natural. Just keep chipping away and you will get there. Breaking the dream into small, simple steps provides a series of motivating wins along the way.

James Holden First Published in Actualise www.equilibrio.com.au
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