For this year’s New Years Resolutions, give yourself an unfair advantage to make your Goals and New Years Resolutions stick and work for you… I recommend you grab yourself a copy of “Your Best Year Ever“ and make 2022 truly YOUR best year ever!
Have you already made resolutions for the New Year?
If not – then it’s high time!
You know that no New Year’s Eve party can avoid the topic! While drinks were being poured diligently, it’s time to start: “And what are your plans for the New Year?”
Interestingly, hardly anyone asks: “So what did you plan to do last year? And what came out of it? ”
The truth about New Year’s Resolutions
According to a recent study, 80–92% of all New Year’s resolutions are quickly forgotten* when everyday soberness returns after the alcohol frenzy and the euphoria of the New Year celebrations.
No wonder, as bad as we are in setting reasonable goals for the new year! Because they usually sound like this:
“I want to loose weight.”
“I want to smoke less.”
“I don’t want to eat so unhealthy anymore.”
“I want to do more sports.”
“I want to start a blog.”
“I want to meet more people.”
Some even have several of these resolutions at once. It almost reads like a bizarre personal ad: “Excessive smoker, meat eater and sports hater with 20 kilogram excess weight would like to turn their life upside down in one fell swoop (without a specific goal, system or support)”
Maybe you recognized yourself a little bit? Most people formulate their resolutions like this and try to implement them, but they are doomed to fail. This creates a lot of frustration, low self-confidence and the loss of the will to work on yourself. What a pity!
10 reasons why most New Year’s Resolutions fail
What goes wrong with most resolutions? The name “resolutions” alone leads in the wrong direction. In the end, these are goals. And from everyday work, most of us know that goals should not be wishful thinking, but concrete plans.
Nevertheless, in private we like to focus on a little less professionalism and concrete action – maybe also so that you have a back door from the start, if it does not work so well with losing weight. Here are the top 10 mistakes in writing our goals and wishes for the New Year:
Unspecific and unmeasurable goals
Too many or too ambitious goals at once
Goals without a teeth – “I would like” and “I want” instead of “I will” and “I have to”
Goals without meaning and vision
Negative goals
Goals only in your own mind and without a control mechanism
Goals beyond your control
Goals without plans B and C.
Goals without measures and habits
Goals without support and responsibility
How to set goals for the New Year correctly
Are you ready for success? Then first of all let’s switch from talking about New Year’s resolutions and call it “New Year’s Goals”. It is immediately clear that we are serious and satisfied with nothing less than the successful implementation. Follow my principles and prepare your most successful year so far!
1. Set specific and measurable goals
I spare you here with the controversial “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” dogma. But just because you can’t measure everything in the world doesn’t mean that concrete and measurable goals are no better than vague ones. “I want to eat healthier” is just so vague that you never know whether you are closer to your goal or not. “I want to do more sport” can be fulfilled if you previously did no sport and now take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Specific and measurable goals help you in the definition phase to think about exactly what you want to achieve or what you have to and want to do for it. Examples of specific, measurable goals are:
* “I will walk, walk or run 30 minutes 3 times a week”
* “I will eat meat at most 5 times a week.”
* “I will only eat salad, soup or vegetables at lunchtime eat. ”
* “ I will give at least one word in each meeting. ”
* “ I will go to networking events at least twice a month. ”
Do you see the difference? Here it becomes very concrete what needs to be done to achieve the goal. And that is the first step to success.
2. Set a few important goals
Would you like to change your whole life? Great! But I recommend you start with one thing! We all shy away from change! It is difficult and often has to be worked hard and for a long time before new patterns and habits develop. If you try to change too much at the same time, you often fail because of yourself and your ambitions. Therefore, set only a few but important goals. Goals often need new habits to be achieved. However, it is extremely difficult to introduce several changes at the same time in patterns that have been used for years.
In addition, new habits need at least three to four weeks before they have really settled in. So choose a goal that you want to start with and that is particularly important for you, for example losing weight. If you have created the habit necessary to reach the goal, you can move on to the next one. This is how you create experiences of success, which in turn boost motivation for new goals.
3. Set realistic goals and intermediate goals
A New Year, a new beginning – time for ambitious goals! Or? Ambitious goals often motivate us briefly, but can quickly become overwhelming. If the pounds do not tumble as quickly as expected or the legs are heavy after a few minutes, we ask ourselves “How on earth can I lose 10 kilos?” Or “How the hell will I ever run a marathon?”. Some manage to struggle through these difficult phases, but others fall by the wayside here. If big goals overwhelm you, set yourself smaller goals or partial goals, but at a shorter distance. “I want to complete a 10-kilometer run in three months” is better than “I want to run a marathon in twelve months.” But after the 10-kilometer run, you can easily target the half-marathon distance for the next three months. Small goals are more manageable – that’s why we approach them with more confidence and are more convinced of success – an important prerequisite for success!
4. Find your WHY and smash your goals!
Would you like to win the lottery? Me too! But unfortunately I never play because, no matter how I twist and turn it, it is impossible to say with certainty that I will win the lottery. Who dreams of winning the lottery or wants Christmas presents, says “I wish” and “I would like”. Those who want to achieve goals say “I will” and “I have to”. Only the things that we have to do are really done. So find reasons why you must and will achieve your goals. When searching for a strong “WHY”, two basic driving forces help you: pain and joy.
For example, if you want to lose weight, try to imagine the pain and suffering you will have if you do not lose weight soon. For example, you could imagine how your health is going downhill, how you are being laughed at or pitied by others, or how your partner is turning away from you. It is also best to imagine the positive consequences if you are successful: just think of your newly gained self-confidence, your fitness, and the attraction that you exude. When you visualize in pain and joy dimensions you find a strong WHY for your goals, and suddenly you no longer want to be successful, you have to and you will!
5. Set yourself positive goals
Please don’t think of a pink elephant! Stop, stop thinking about the pink elephant right now! Perhaps you already know our brain’s habit of skillfully ignoring negations. This works not only with pink elephants, but actually with everything else that we focus on. On a fateful day in 1973, an (admittedly drunk) Libyan truck driver did what many would have thought impossible: in the Saharan desert, he rammed the only (and also sacred) tree within a radius of hundreds of kilometers. If we do not assume that he did this on purpose, then there is only one logical explanation: when he saw the tree, he could only remember that he must not ram this obstacle under any circumstances! So set yourself positive goals, otherwise you risk doing the opposite. So, “eat healthy” instead of “stop eating unhealthy food”, “stay friendly” instead of “stop being so negative all the time” and “go out regularly” instead of “not always hanging around at home.”
6. Set goals that you can control yourself
What is the difference between these two goals:
1. I want to run a half marathon in under two hours, and
2. I want to be among the top 500 in the New York half marathon?
Okay, here is another pair of goals:
1. I want to go to at least one networking event each week and meet at least one new person each
2. I want to find a new job
Is the difference clear? The first goal is within your control, the second is not. Why is that important? Quite simply: if you make your satisfaction dependent on the achievement of your goal, then you should also set goals that you can achieve independently. Otherwise, you make your well-being dependent on the actions of others, and this can only cause problems in the long term, because you can influence others but not control them. So if I want to lose weight to please my partner more, I can set myself the goal of doing sports three times a week and losing five kilos, and I can do that myself. However, I cannot force my partner’s favor. So set yourself goals that are clear about what you can and must do to achieve the goal. In this way you can be satisfied with yourself if you meet your target, even if the “final goal” does not materialize and thus create the best conditions for pursuing your goals ambitiously in the future.
7. Anticipate setbacks and develop counter strategies
Have you ever pursued a goal and suffered a setback? Maybe you decided to go to the gym every week and then you just couldn’t make it. Or you went on a diet and eventually picked up sweets. The big question is: how did you deal with it? Did you say “Now it doesn’t matter” and gave up completely straight away? Or did you say “Now more than ever”, “One time is not the end” or “I will continue anyway”? Setbacks are inevitable. It is important how we deal with them. So think about how to deal with potential setbacks or problems beforehand. What if you have to take a break, get sick, go on vacation, get weak, have to take care of children, miss a workout, forget your goal, and so on? Develop a battle plan directly if problems arise and one for further action in case you get off track. For example: * “With my diet, I am prone to sweets. So at the beginning I throw away all the sweets. If I get weak, I exercise more to compensate. In addition, I definitely continue because I really want to lose five kilos. Tripping up once is not the end! ”
8. Plan your necessary measures and habits
A goal is only as good as the measures and habits that support it. If you want to lose weight, you need measures and habits, such as eating and exercises plans, and the habits to implement them. If you want to be promoted, you have to work effectively, market yourself in the company and convince your boss – this can be done, for example, through the habit of planning your day effectively and actively talking about your projects. So not only set a goal, but also combine it with the measures that you can control yourself.
These measures must become a habit, because only those who do something regularly can achieve their goals. One-off lucky-successes are rarely sustainable and strong enough to really make a difference. Or to put it another way: you don’t get lean and healthy from exercising once.
Habits consist of
(1) a trigger that actions the habit,
(2) the habit itself, and
(3) a reward.
Different triggers could look like this:
Put your sportswear in front of your bed in the evening
Meditate when the coffee maker is running
Chew gum when you start smoking again
Set your cellphone alarm clock to the times when you want to take screen breaks
And then do the habit!
Over time, it works better and your habit will continue to solidify. As a reward, of course, many individual things come into question. But it works best if you manage to make feeling good a reward according to your habit. This may sound a bit esoteric, but it has the advantage that you are not tied to a physical reward and can cultivate this “conscious, good feeling” for many other aspects of your life. So when you have your good new habit, stop and get in touch with yourself. Enjoy the good feeling, the pride, the satisfaction with yourself.
9. Get support and accountability partners
What is the difference between a jog that you have planned and one that you have agreed to do? The former will be dropped in case of doubt, the latter almost never. How so? Because we are committed to doing something with someone else and we don’t want to disappoint that person. We humans also have a strong need to act consistently. So when we make a promise, our inner being urges us to keep it just to be congruent with our own statement. Take advantage of this in two ways:
Tell others about your goal. Or write it on Facebook for everyone to see. Simply telling or posting increases the likelihood that you would otherwise be inconsistent with everyone else.
Find a partner for your goal. Exercising together, dieting, quitting smoking, writing blog articles, etc. is easier together than doing it alone.
10. Write down your goals and check them regularly
Do you remember what you set out to do last year? Probably not, because you probably never wrote it down and rarely thought about the goal after that boozy New Year’s Eve. The last step is therefore to write down the goal or goals with all its concrete, measurable, positive action steps.
Here again to check: The goals are …
specific and measurable
important and few
realistic and possibly broken down to sub-goals
provided with a strong “why” – and * positive
directly controllable by you
Plan B for setbacks
supported by measures and habits
shared with others
When you write them down, you may notice what is still missing, what feels uncomfortable, and where you can still make improvements. Next, determine a ritual to review your goal and actions.
It is usually a good idea to check weekly how much you have adhered to your own guidelines and have come closer to your goal. So set a weekly appointment on the calendar where you will check your goals. It makes sense to do this on weekends or Mondays in the morning so that you can plan the next steps for the new week. If you check your goals weekly, you don’t run the risk of losing sight of them!
If you take all of this into account, you have greatly reduced the chance of losing sight of your New Year’s goals!
To your successful New Year 2022!
If you want a shortcut to make your Goals and New Years Resolutions stick and work for you… I recommend you grab yourself a copy of “Your Best Year Ever“ and make 2022 truly YOUR best year ever!
