New Years Resolutions – How To Make Them & Achieve Your Goals
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Video Transcript Below
New Years Resolutions – How To Make Them & Achieve Your Goals – Video Transcript Below
Hello its Neil Ball your internet marketing and personal development coach from www.WorkWithNeilBall.com.
I am going to talk about the annual ritual of setting New Years resolutions and why most people fail to achieve their goals or resolutions? I am going to talk about what’s the best strategy is to achieve your goals? Presumably you are interested in some way in changing something in your life right now. Also the chances are you have made many previous New Year resolutions and failed to make any, or many of them happen. It’s also probably the case that most people that you know go through the same ritual every year, and create resolutions and breaking them at some point in the New Year. So you are wondering what you have to do make your goals turn into reality this time. The first thing that you need to do is open your mind and stay with me to the end. After all you don’t know what you don’t know, and I have some ideas that may make your resolutions that you are about to make actually happen. So you owe it to yourself understand what you and most people are doing wrong year after year. I am going to give you a simple way of setting your goals, and I am also going provide you with a strategy for making them happen. At the same time, I am going to explain where most people go wrong which is important to understand, so that you don’t fall in to the same traps. So the first test for you is how serious are you about making your New Years resolution happen. Do you want it or them enough to make it to the end of what I have to say.The chances are if you can’t make the commitment to make it to the end of this then you will also fail to fulfil your New Years resolution goals.
Don’t allow yourself to say what can be some of the most dangerous words – “I already know that” because the chances are that is the reason you keep failing to make whatever it is you want happen. I love to help people to reach their potential in life. It is so rewarding to see people have a dream and learn how to achieve it and make it a reality. Every year I see people make New Years resolutions and the majority of them fail in some way or other. Because of that I thought I would provide some advice on achieving the goals that you want and deserve, and if you apply this information it will result in you outpacing your friends. In order to achieve that, it is important that you understand everything in this presentation. Whether you are willing to do that will be a good indicator of whether you are serious about you resolutions. So what are new years resolutions? A New Years resolutions are personal commitments that you make to yourself to make a lifestyle alteration, or to change a bad habit, or to improve, achieve or to do, or to complete something that is seen as beneficial by you.
The New Year creates the motivation for many people and is a great time for you to make a change in your life that you have been meaning to make for some time. Every year between Christmas and New Year people will start making promises to themselves which become New Years resolutions to change their life in some way or other in the New Year ahead. It’s a time when you commit to making the New Year better than last year and achieving your every dream. Shortly after the calendar begins the New Year millions of people around the globe will begin pursuing their New Year Resolutions. Maybe this year you want to lose weight, or maybe you want to eat healthier, or maybe quit smoking, or maybe you want to move to another house, or maybe you want to change your job or maybe you want to change your career, or maybe you want to spend more time with your family, or maybe you want to get out of debt, or maybe you want to become an entrepreneur and achieve your dreams, or maybe you have some other dream. Simply setting a goal raises your chances of achieving it. The truth is that the majority of these resolutions will fail to be accomplished, or fail to be maintained within weeks or months because people make only a vague wishes, and they also forget how hard they have to work to make them a reality as they hit bumps in the road, they get thrown off their stride.
Typically according to the Examiner the most popular New Year resolutions types are Self-improvement or education types of commitments which is the biggest commitment by people at 47%. Then it is weight related goals at 38%, money related commitments are at 34% and relationship resolutions are at 31%. These numbers add to more than 100% because some people make more than one New Year resolution. If you are interested in self-improvement and improving your life, so that you can spend more time with the people that you want to spend time with, doing the things that you want to do, when you want to, then I have some personal development and a money making opportunity information at the end of this presentation. If this does not interest you what I have to say about New Year resolutions still applies to any other areas of your life. Do you remember your last New Years resolution and did you achieve them? If you didn’t then you are with the majority of people. It seems that failing to achieve New Years resolutions is almost as common as setting them each year. How often have you set the same goals year after year and failed to achieve them? Are you frustrated by your lack of success and financial freedom in life and not living to your potential? Have you ever wondered why people who don’t seem as smart as you have accomplished much more than you?
Many people make self-improvement commitments to themselves at the beginning of every New Year. According to the Examiner, only about 50% of people set themselves New Year resolutions each year. In some other research by the University of Scranton, they found that only 8% of people achieve their New Year goals. What’s even more worrying is that most people don’t make any other commitments throughout the rest of the year to achieve their dreams and goals so they stay as they are, never knowing what could have been. Without goals in your life, you don’t have sense of where you would like to be and what you would like to be doing differently. This will probably mean that you feel a sense of being lost or stagnant, staying still instead of moving forward and striving for better. So are you one of the 8% of people who do? Or are you in the 92% who failed to achieve your goals and you want to make history rather than repeat it and fail to accomplish your New Year’s resolutions yet again. Your New years resolutions should not be impossible dreams but well thought out and achieveable goals. The object of the game is to accomplish the goals set and yet the majority of people fail. By thinking your resolutions through and planning how you are going to accomplish them you can achieve them. Just resolving is not enough to achieve success, you also need an action plan. In essence you need to have clear goals and then take daily actions.
There are some simple steps that you can take to make sure that you achieve your goals and you avoid getting off track yet again this time. Shortly I will help you with a simple formula that will help you to achieve your goals this time. It will cover how to properly make a goals and Plan to achieve that goal and take action, and the ongoing motivation and what to do when you achieve the goals. So what happens to most peoples new years resolutions? The majority of people have an idea that they want to improve their life in some way and they will make half-hearted attempts at New Year resolutions. Initially these people set themselves goals with the intention of achieving them. Often they will become excited of how achieving those goals will improve their lives in some way. Over the first few weeks and months of the New Year most people realise that they are not making any progress, or as much progress as they would like towards the goals that they have set and they abandon them when they hit the first difficulty. Other people will start moving towards their commitment and then just give up on them because they can’t be bothered. And other people will make the commitments and never act upon them at all. Some will have abandoned their New Year resolutions by the end of January. After Six months from setting New Years resolutions over 50% of people have given up on at least one of their New Years resolutions.
A minority of people will be more determined and are prepared to make a commitment to making this year different, so they achieve the changes and success in their lives that they want. So why do most people fail at keeping new years resolutions?
Most people will set New Years resolution goals that are Superficial and aren’t meaningful or specific. People will say something vague and uninspiring like ‘lose weight’ or ‘get fit’ ‘make more money’ or ‘decrease debt’. All too often people will confuse goals with wishes, dreams or desires. There is a technique and skill to setting goals that needs to be developed with the right knowledge. Because the majority of people don’t have the right information on how to set goals they set themselves up to fail to reach their goals. The goals that folks make are often spontaneous wishes, dreams or desires and they think that is enough to ensure that they achieve them, but it isn’t. Setting the goal, is only the first step and without a properly thought out plan it is likely that the person will fail. People will fail to plan their New Years resolutions and because they fail to plan they inadvertently plan to fail. The planning needs consideration and organisation of the required activities, without which you will almost certainly fail. Obviously the first step in making a change in your life is to decide that you want and to make a decision to make that change.
Quite often people will make New Years resolutions that are not realistic. Someone who is overweight may say that they want to lose an amount of weight in two months that is virtually impossible to achieve. This will often come about because they don’t know much about what they want to achieve, ie losing weight, and as a result they set an unachievable target. So whilst the setting of the goal is commendable they also set themselves up to fail, because the goal is impossible to achieve. So the result is that the big expectations result in even bigger disappointment. Because people are often intolerant when it comes to lack of progress or setbacks in achieving their goals, these can disengage their motivation and cause them to give up. Another common reason for resolutions or goals failing is that people will forget that they are not just trying to accomplish something that is new, they are also trying to eliminate an old habit at the same time. Maybe you have committed to a personal development program or internet marketing training which requires two hours a day in your personal time. This may require you to stop wasting time watching TV, or being on Facebook or Skype chatting with friends, or quitting before you have done the 2 hours to do something else.
Initially the inspiration and excitement of pursuing a new goal may make it look like it is going to be easy to do, and for all of your waste of time habits to disappear. In the short term they may disappear because of the inspiration and excitement. But as that initial surge of enthusiasm wears off, and the reality of doing what is needed to achieve the goal dawns, you have to ensure that the bad habits don’t distract you and make you fail. Often people may have a lack of Support or Scrutiny from other people. Very often people will make New Years resolutions to themselves and not tell other people about their intentions. Often people will set themselves goals that aren’t really for them in the first place. Maybe they are trying to satisfy someone else’s expectations of them. Unless your New Years resolution is something that you actually want, it is likely that you will not achieve it if you lack desire. Very often people will fail to stick to their resolutions and they will blame their own lack of will power. Research has shown that you will perform as well as your own belief about the amount of will power that you have. So if you don’t think you have much will power then you will probably fail. And if you do think you have a lot of will power you will probably succeed. The truth is that you have as much will power as you think you have. There is a great quote by Henry Ford that says ‘If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right’. So by saying that you have a lack of will power, your journey towards your self-improvement will be a be a self-fulfilling prophecy and you will fail. Therefore, it is a good idea to start telling yourself that you have a lot of will power and you will start to succeed more.
Some people will actually forget that they made the resolutions at all because they didn’t write them down and put them somewhere that they will see them every day to keep them on track, and once they carry on with their lives in the New Year and they are hit with life’s problems they forget all about them. I am now going to talk about deciding what you want. Very often many people will set too many goals. They may sit down and think about what they want to accomplish in the coming year, or what bad habits they want to stop, and a lots of ideas come to mind. This may seem like a good thing, but when you try to accomplish too much, your mind will lack focus, and the result will probably be that you accomplish very little, if any of your resolutions. What you need to do, when making a New Years resolutions is to make a list of the things that you want to achieve and prioritise them and sort them into order. Then you need to look at the sorted list and ask yourself which ones can you realistically achieve? And which that will make the most impact in your life. Maybe it is your relationship, Maybe it is weight loss, Maybe it is your finance, Maybe it is your career, or Maybe it is becoming an entrepreneur. Then you need to be honest with yourself and pick the main and most important prioritised goals in your list that will have the most impact in your life. You don’t need to set all of the goals at once. You are more likely to achieve a goal if you focus your effort and energy on a small list or the most important goals in your list. Remember the more goals that you have, and you have, mean that you have to divide your focus and energy, and the more likely it will be that you will fail. The start of a New Year is not the only time that you can set goals and commitments. You should first achieve the most important ones and then as those are accomplished you can commit to achieving other goals on your list.
Now that you understand to know why many people fail to achieve the new years resolutions, I am now going to talk about how to set your new year resolution goals. So that you do achieve them. The first thing you need to do is write down your goals. By writing your goals down properly, you substantially increase the chances of you achieving them and you will set yourself apart from about 90 per cent of the population who don’t write them down. It is important to write your New Years Resolution goals down as a promise to yourself, which is in detail with why you want them and sign it to ensure you achieve success. Ideally write your goals on a large piece of paper and then put in on the wall somewhere prominent in your house, so you will see and read it frequently every day. That way you wont get to forget about them. It is also a good idea to say them out loud as you read them every day.
If you don’t write out your goals, like most people don’t, then they will remain as vague ideas with only vague plans in your head which will probably result in you failing or only getting incremental results at best. There is something magical and special happen when you write your goals down. By doing this it reduces the opportunity to forget them, unlike verbal goals, and it provides an irrevocably document that commits you to make your goals your reality. Writing your goals down creates a confirming action and it will make them more believable. When you personally put your commitments to yourself on paper you are much more likely to live up to the goals that you have written. When your goals are written in a specific language style that I am about to explain, then they are more likely to create a magical pull for you to believe what you have written. Another reason that a written commitment on New Years Resolution goals is important is that it requires more effort than verbal ones. The effect of more effort is that it will create a greater ability to influence your attitude to your own commitment to your own future.
Now I am actually going to look at how to write your goals. It is very important to know how to write your goals so that it is more likely that you will achieve them. This will work with anything you want to achieve in life. Often people will confuse the goal with the how you are going to achieve it. Your goals must be specific and clear. It is not good enough just to say that you are going to start going to the gym in the coming year or you are going to lose weight. If your goals are vague and uninspiring you will not achieve them. A meaningful New Years resolution will probably be relational and involve other people such as your family. You need to think through exactly what your goal is going to be, why you are going to do it, where you are going to do it, and at what time you are going to do it. I am going to explain the steps that you need to follow in writing your goals down. The difference between success and failure in writing goals is having a clear outcome and taking action on that outcome. So the first thing that you need is belief, and an outcome that is perfectly clear. People who are successful in achieving their goals are the ones who have faith and belief in their vision. They have faith in what they are going to accomplish. You can’t hit a goal that is fuzzy and not specific.
When you write your goals, you need to have certain important information included to improve increase the likelihood of you achieving it. I will now list what your goals need to include in them. First of all, what is it that you want to achieve? I have already covered this previously, so I am not going to talk about it any more. You also need today’s date that you are setting the goal. You also need to date that you need to achieve the goal by. If you don’t have a deadline then you don’t have any urgency. So that the date that you intend to achieve it by is very important. If your goals revolve around an amount, it is important to specify how much. If you are aiming to make an amount of money or pay off an amount of debt it is important to be specific about the amount, and put a number to it. Also you need to write down the emotional benefit of achieving the goal. How will it make you feel when you achieve it? You need to know why you want what you want in your goals. Why do want to achieve your goals? That’s very very important. How will achieving your goals benefit you? Without a purpose you are unlikely to achieve it. Most people will focus most of their time on the ‘what’ and almost leave the ‘why’ as minor consideration in their New Years resolutions. This is the wrong approach and the priority is imbalanced. By knowing what the ‘why’ is, it clarifies your goals and it keeps you focused. You need to specifically figure out what your reasons are, and your motivation is for the achieving of your goals. What does it mean to you to achieve your goals? What will be the emotional benefits when you achieve your goals? How will you feel when you do achieve them?
When you feel like quitting, working towards achieving your goals remembering why you want to achieve your goals is a fantastic motivator to ensure that you keep working towards it in any case. Next is evidence of accomplishment. When you achieve your goals what evidence will there be that you have achieved it? For example if you had an income goal then you would be able to look at your bank account statement and see the money credited to your account. If you are aiming to lose weight, you can see the reading on the scales when you stand on them. Also, where will you be when you see the evidence of accomplishment? What I mean by that is, when you see the evidence of accomplishing your goals what environment will you be in. Will you be in your house or in your office or in front of your computer or somewhere else? Also you need to include as many of your five senses as you can in your goal – Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. What reward will you give yourself? It is very important that when you set your goals it is important to include in your plan how much better life will be for you and the important people in your life when you achieve you New Years Resolution goals. Also find a way of rewarding yourself with something nice when you achieve your goals to celebrate achieving it and include it in your plan. The reward needs to be exciting enough to motivate you to take the action required.
Also when you write you goals, you need to write it in the present tense as if you have already achieved it or them. And use as many your senses as possible. The idea of this is so that when you read your goals, you can visualise yourself already achieving them, make it as detailed as you can using evidence of accomplishment. Also use time based evidence of you having just achieved it. Also include the nice reward that you are going to give yourself when you have accomplished the goal. The idea is that when you read it to yourself you automatically see a visual representation of you achieving the goal. The goals should be written so clearly so that if you were to read it to a 10 year old child they would understand exactly what your goal is and they would then be able to explain it to you in detail. Once you have written your goal it should be something like this. I, Neil Ball am sitting in my house with my family in the UK. The date is January 1st 2015, and I have just been looking at my bank account staring at the money that I have earned from January 2nd 2014 to January 1st 2015 and as I add it up I see that I have earned £200,000 from working at home doing internet marketing training and personal development coaching. I smile to myself, and slowly it turns in to a big grin. For a moment as I look outside and enjoy the view of the trees in my garden on this wintery day, I can hear the faint noise of the traffic in the distance and I think back over the last 12 months. I can’t believe how easy it has been to make £200,000 in one year. Now just to reward myself I am booking a holiday to Disney World for myself, my wife and kids.
Most people will not bother to take the time to write a goal that is crystal clear and as a result they don’t achieve anything. Once you are clear on what you want then you can set about planning how you are going to achieve it. By applying the principles above to setting your goals and then taking action each and every day you will make progress towards realizing your desires. The next thing is to plan how you are going to accomplish your goals. Having goals and knowing why you want to achieve them is a great starting point but without a plan of how you are going to achieve them is just wishful thinking and you will probably fail to achieve them. Your goals should be broken down as much as possible in to the simple tasks and include all the major steps needed that you can think of. You need to include a way of measuring your progress because you can’t master what you can’t measure. You need to create a realistic plan for achieving your goals based on what you have got and your skills and ability. It is very important that you are realistic about your abilities. This is one of the reasons people will fail because they over estimate what they are capable of. With a plan that has steps, milestones, dates and measurable amounts, you can then monitor where you are and when you are not on target you can adjust what you are doing so that you achieve your New Years resolutions goals. The Small mile points encourage you to achieve the results and will keep you motivated. If there are things that you don’t know then just include the things you know at present but don’t let not knowing everything prevent you from taking action. The plan will allow you to turn your small action steps into habits each day. If your plan does not provide things that you can measure and keep track of your success then is not a very good one.
You should also track your progress, once you start taking action. At the beginning of the goal setting process you made a plan of how and when you are going to achieve them. This will be your best estimate of what it will take.
As you progress towards achieving your goals you should monitor and log your progress towards your milestones and goals as well as any problems and what you did to solve them. Notes should be made at regular intervals so you are able to easily see what is working and what is not. By tracking your progress it will be easy to adjust your plan, so you are able to work and progress towards your plan efficiently. As you see your progress towards your goal and you hit your milestones, write it down and this will fuel your motivation. Also if you end up with a major problem then you will be able to see from your notes what you did to cause the problem which should allow you to make the adjustments required to correct the problem. When you hit your goals you should also write down when to do this. The tracking of your progress will allow you to identify problems early on before they become big problems and take preventative action to overcome them.
As you achieve your goals you will start to believe in yourself more and you will believe you can achieve even more in life. Expect unexpected problems, when you first set you goals in your New Years resolutions you will be very confident that you will succeed. The reality may not be quite as straight forward because there will be unexpected challenges and setbacks that could completely derail you if you are not prepared. Clearly you may not know what these problems will be before they happen but it is better expect unexpected problems than to think that there won’t be any. If you want your goals badly enough then even when faced with obstacles, challenges and unexpected problems you have to be prepared to pay the price in time and effort to pursue them.
Next I am going to talk about how to ensure that you achieve your new years resolutions goals. You need to become an expert on what you are trying to achieve. It is important that you understand what it is that you are trying to achieve. You need to become an expert on how to achieve your specific goal or goals. Get information from experts on what you are doing by reading books, and reading about it on the internet, watching training videos, listen to training audios. As you learn more be willing to adjust as you go. Expect that there will be setbacks and adjust as you go. If it doesn’t look like you are going to hit the goal be prepared to increase the amount of time need if required. This is not give yourself permission to be less than 100 per cent committed but it is giving yourself permission to adjust if the goal turns out to be unachievable in the time period set. Tell everyone you know about your new year resolution. Often if you make a New Year Resolution that is a private decision to do something it will be too weak and you will fail because it is too easy to forget about then. By sharing your New Year Resolution and telling as many people as you can about it you are making yourself accountable and putting yourself on the line with a personal commitment to them and you are going to be motivated and more like to achieve your goals because you have your pride is on the line. Also you should ask those people to support and encourage you in your journey to achieving the goals.
The best way to do this, is to make a list of all of the people that you most want to respect you and then tell them about it personally and using social media such as Facebook. If you want to really make this commitment even more effective then get some business cards printed and print your commitment on the back of them and give them to everyone in your list personally. Then every time you think about quitting imagine how the people on your list will think less of you if you can’t stick to your own commitment. Obviously when you do achieve your goals then all of those people will respect you even more. As long as the people on your list do not have a crab mentality then they will encourage you to achieve your goals. You may not feel comfortable making yourself accountable to everyone who is important to you. But if you are not prepared to put yourself through being uncomfortable doing this, then you will also probably not be prepared to do what it takes to achieve your goals. And without this accountability it is more likely you will fail as well. If you fail to achieve your new years resolution. Or if you find yourself drifting off-track in achieving your New Year Resolution you should look at your original plan and adjust it so you can regain momentum. Failing to hit the target is not a reason to give yourself permission to quit. It may be that you set the goal too high and it was actually unachievable.
Maybe you have never tried to do what you are trying to achieve and only as you do it you discover this and therefore adjust to a more realistic level. Or maybe you set yourself too many goals and it is not possible for you to dedicate yourself to all of them at the same time as balancing your work and family commitments. As I said earlier look at the list and prioritise what you want and consider putting one or some of the commitments on hold whilst you dedicate yourself to achieving the most important ones. Ideally only focus on one of them and achieve that first. The truth is that by do too much at once you are virtually guaranteeing that you will fail at everything. Remember that being consistent and persistent are some of the key components to success in anything. It is highly unlikely that you will achieve you goals overnight. Also you will experience setbacks along the way just carry on in any case. There is a saying that says “Those that last always finish first”. Review your resolutions periodically. As I mentioned earlier it is important to read your plan for achieving your resolutions regularly but it is also important to review it at regular intervals and compare where you are with your plan to check your progress. If it is not going to plan then it is good to understand why it isn’t and adjust and recalibrate your plan to allow for that so that you stay on course. As long as you don’t make excuses and there are unexpected reasons then this is ok. It is better to achieve 80% of a goal by this time next year than 0% because you have quit.
Inspiration – Inspiration is the fuel that will drive you to achieve greater things than you know that you are capable of. It will assist you in achieving your New Years resolutions goals when you are hit with unexpected difficulties. The inspiration is like a well that you can tap into to give you an energy boost when you are hit with challenges you don’t expect. Your inspiration may come from books, videos, audios or other people motivated people. It is useful to have a list of things that inspire you that you can quickly and easily access when you have moments of doubt.
Associate with people who share the same or similar goals – You do not need to be alone when you set off on the journey to achieve your goals.
The support of the people who matter to you will help you a lot in your cause. Obviously if people who matter have a crab mentality then you need to find a way of associating with people who don’t. It is also an extremely good idea to join a group of people who want to achieve the same or similar to you. Research has proven that people are more likely to succeed in attaining their goals when they associate with people who share a similar objective or aspiration because they will provide support, scrutiny and have an expectation. If you want to lose weight join something like weight watchers which will increase your commitment, motivation and accountability. If you want success in your life then associate with people who want the same. I have some information at the end on how you can do this. Or if you want to create an online home business then at the end of this training I have some information that will provide the right support and information to ensure that you succeed. If you are doing something else then join some group that is relevant to what you are doing. Use the internet to find the local groups such as local meet ups and others.
It is very important that you are crystal clear about the significance of your goals otherwise you will soon be finding excuses to give yourself permission to wriggle out of achieving these New Years Resolutions and forgetting about it yet again. When you are clear on what you want and why you want itwhere you are going it is impossible to become distracted, or to become depressed or fall into a lot of the other traps that most people fall into. Consistency is the key.
Remember the most common reason New Years resolutions and goals fail is old habits. When you achieve your goals it isn’t time to rest on your laurels it’s time to set another goals and look for other ways that you can improve your life. To find out more about how I can help you Grow as a person so you can leverage the power of the internet to be Free to Achieve your Dreams.
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