Where did my new year’s resolution go: 9 strategies to rescue them

I bet you made some New Year’s resolutions.

Most of us did because resolve comes easily on December 31^st.

But give it a few weeks and many of the resolutions you made might already be in disarray, compromised, or abandoned.

And the resolute determination to make this year the year that you stick to your resolutions has probably been forgotten altogether.

I’m not writing this to make you feel guilty over this abandonment.

Instead, it is about the real reasons resolutions and the determination to achieve them are lost, year after year, and how to change things so that this year you’ll get on track to systematically set and achieve new goals.

So, here are 9 strategies to rescue them:

1. You can’t achieve new goals or make desired changes without allocating time to do so.

One of the big reasons that resolutions never become reality is that no room is made for them in your daily schedule.

If your days are already full, and you resolve to get in half an hour a day on the treadmill or on your laptop writing that book, that half an hour has to come from somewhere.

Somethings got to give!

You have to find one thing or several things that you are currently doing that you can cut completely or cut some time from.

To make this a better year you will have to do things differently to last year.

There are obviously some things you are going to need to keep doing, some new things you will need to do, and a bunch of things you’ll have to stop doing to make room for the new, more productive activities.

2. Priorities should govern schedule; schedule shouldn’t govern priorities.

Another mistake made by the vast majority of business owners and entrepreneurs is that they operate like workers instead of bosses and leaders.

They turn up at work and then they let people, events, and interruptions come at them all day and take control of their day.

To have a better year this year you’ll have to wrest control away from others’ priorities and be governed by your own priorities.

Stop firefighting!

3. Resolutions aren’t resolutions without resolve.

Only you can decide what really matters to you.

So, don’t bother making resolutions to appease or satisfy others.

Be honest with yourself – that’s a prerequisite for success.

4. Resolutions require resources.

Almost anything you decide to do, any change you decide to make, any goal you set out to achieve requires new or different resources.

That might be a piece of home exercise equipment or different food in the cupboard, a private work environment outside the office, or researching new information.

You aren’t really serious about a resolution unless you invest in and gather the required resources.

Sometimes investment motivates follow-through since you’ve expended time, effort, and money into it. But don’t be held back by limited resource thinking. If you are truly committed, you’ll find the resources.

5. Daily Progress

Take your goals, your objectives and break them down to a timeline and to-do list for each day, from now to fruition.

Big results happen in baby steps. Nothing gets done in occasional big leaps.

I finished my book last year, one hour a day, a handful of pages each day.

Refuse to end any day without doing something, no matter how small, that moves you toward the goal!

6. Who motivates the motivator?

As a businessperson, as an entrepreneur, as a leader you may be doing a lot of motivating of others, but who motivates you?

For the most part, you need to create self-motivation with a structure as I mentioned in idea #5.

But you can also get into a Mastermind group, hire a business coach, pair up with a like-minded friend so that there is somebody to hold you accountable, to report progress to, and to get encouragement from.

Any professional sports coach will tell you: measurement automatically improves performance, and measurement monitored by someone else, further improves performance.

7. Build up to change

I had neglected going for my daily walk for a few months, but am now getting back to it.

I started a while ago with a goal of 30 minutes a day and now I am doing those 30 minutes each day.

But if I tried doing that out of the starting blocks, I would not have made it.

So, I started with a measly 10 minutes a day for the first few days, 15 minutes a day for the next few weeks until I built up to 30 minutes a day.

So, say you resolve to get up an hour earlier every morning to work on some projects. You could start with 15 minutes for two weeks, then 20 minutes for two weeks, then 30 minutes for a month, then 45 minutes for two weeks, and then you will find reaching the hour mark a lot more achievable.

8. It’s not too late to regroup!

You may already have let your resolutions slip away.

Doesn’t matter. Today, tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest, block out a couple of hours! Bolt the door, silence the phone, and re-group.

Review the resolution and pick one or two that mean the most and apply the 7 ideas I’ve just shared with you.

9. Don’t try and do it all on your own

Resolve weakens under pressure, under stress, when you feel your time is out of your control.

As I mentioned above, it’s really hard to be successful on your own.

You need to find an accountability partner, a group of like-minded people, a coach.

Or talk to me about Business Accelerator Mastermind and I’ll show you how we provide all 3!