With the New Year barely a week away, most people are busy winding down 2010 and are getting ready to start the New Year with a bang! Everyone wakes up to the new beginning or stays up late on the New Year’s Eve to toast a new beginning, many with some resolution to make a change, as they revel in the festivities.
The sad part is nearly 90% of the New Year’s resolutions cease to be pursued past the time when others are still wishing you a Happy New Year; typically till the end of January. Barely 1% of these resolutions get carried out diligently throughout the year and produce meaningful outcomes.
Why is that?
I think that part of the reason for such abandonment—not failure—rate for the New Year’s resolutions is that they are made in most cases for the occasion, often on the spot, as people hoist their glasses to usher in the New Year. The reason for my calling this as abandonment, and not failure, is that failure requires deliberate action (often misguided) towards a purposeful goal. The very act of how these resolutions get made, tend to make them sweeping and not thoughtful and specific: I want to be thin again, I want to be a big boss, I want to eliminate poverty in this world, and so on! If you are serious about making a New Year’s resolution then I suggest you start now, be very specific, and make a plan, and then waltz into the New Year with that solid plan that is relatively bulletproof and the one that you can own.
So, what is that plan?
Start with what is most important to you and where the pain is. This could be a relationship, your career, your personal appearance, or your own finances. Since many such items are interrelated (career success, finance, and relationships) find one item that pivots your pain. Taking on just one highly leveraged item will keep you committed to the course of action until you improve your situation on that front alone; its interrelated and positive fallout to other items that matter to you will keep you motivated and on track.
In managing goals there is that SMART approach people find useful. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and Time-bound. Let us take each one and see how you can use this simple reminder to frame your own New Year’s resolution:
Specific: For your goal to be specific, you must be specific about what you want. You cannot just say I want to be thin again, you must say I want to lose weight until I reach a certain number and then stay there. As almost everyone knows staying there (with lost weight) is even harder than getting there. For a goal to be specific you must own the pain of that goal not being realized. You must be able to envision yourself, both having achieved the end goal and not having achieved it, staying focused on the end-goal. Every time you are tempted to eat something that is going to compromise your commitment to yourself you must keep this vision of being at the desired weight to keep yourself motivated, avoiding such temptation.
Measurable: This parameter does not just relate to the end goal—your weight—but to the factors that drive that goal. In the case of your resolution to lose weight, you must develop a plan for your calorie budget on a daily basis and create a balance between your intake and burn-rate. Exercise is a part of this calculus, so is when you eat and what you eat. How you eat is also a part of this plan. Studies have shown that food eaten hastily or off-schedule can create problems in how it is processed in our bodies. The point of this argument is that you must change your fundamental behavior around this discipline to create meaningful outcomes. Merely eating less and taking on fewer calories sometimes simply do not work for the reasons stated here. Metaphorically, this argument also applies to many other pursuits that entail a personal change.
Achievable: This part of the resolution (goal setting) deals with how achievable is your goal if you do not make serious compromises in your everyday routine. This is a part that is hard for many to deal with. Change in one dimension creates change in many other directions. If you do not systemically plan how those other changes are going to be dealt with, soon you will become frustrated and abandon your resolution. In the case of our example—weight loss—an achievable goal is something close to a few pounds a month. A more aggressive goal can lead to disappointment, and abandonment of the resolution in frustration. Achievable also relates to what can you do without seriously compromising your everyday routine. If you do not take this into account, either you are compromising something that keeps your life going or that you are making compromise in your daily plan to achieve what you set out to achieve, quickly resulting in disappointments and abandoning your pursuit of the goal you set out to achieve.
Realistic: This part of the goal-setting step is driven by factors very similar to those discussed in the paragraph above. Part of the realism comes from the basic calculus of the change dynamic. In the case of weight loss there is a direct correlation between calories taken in and calories burnt on a daily basis. So, someone wanting to lose several pounds each week for many weeks is on an unrealistic path, which will result in abandoning your resolution in frustration. In the case of weight loss, you can control both your intake calories and calories burnt on a daily basis, a situation that can be controlled by your own behavior. In other matters—career management—one may not be that lucky. So, allow yourself for some setbacks and surprises. Adjust accordingly and learn from these setbacks.
Remember that it is the defeats or failures that we experience that create the breakthroughs we seek. Keen awareness of such defeats means that we are consciously on a new path of learning and on an uncharted territory! Linear success leads only to incremental changes or improvements, rarely to breakthroughs! So, philosophically, you must take greater risks (allowing yourself to fail) to achieve the breakthroughs in your life.
Time bound: Getting on any change process requires time to produce results. So, during the planning process specific goals must be set for achieving specific milestones. When setting these milestones it is prudent to allow some latitude in these goals: To reach a certain weight by a certain month (plus or minus some period that you can accommodate because of the things that cannot be controlled). This way one is more likely to stay on the change plan than abandoning it at the first sign of defeat!
Those who understand the Change Curve recognize that most changes initially start with a setback. So, in our own example when you start taking on fewer calories and exercising, your weight in the initial period may actually go UP, instead. Recognize that this is the message of the Change Curve and it is fairly universal.
Additionally, making personal change is one of the most difficult challenges one can undertake. When making such change and sticking to it, you may benefit by reminding of the choice you have between overcoming some initial hardship, and facing irrelevance. Improving your appearance or image, becoming healthier, advancing your career, becoming financially independent, among other goals can seem simple, but are some of the most difficult challenges one can undertake. But, if you follow the guidance from this discussion you are more likely to achieve what you set out to conquer than otherwise.
Also, do not focus so much on the milestones and their timing; allow yourself some slack. Occasionally, reward yourself in a currency that does not violate the spirit of your plan (If you achieved a goal of saving a certain amount of money, do not go and splurge on a luxury automobile to celebrate, but treat yourself to a plan of self-improvement, instead). Make this change a process and not a program (something that has a beginning and an end), so that you can stay on a path that will create your ongoing success! Seek professional help rather than doing this by trial and error; it is an investment worth making for your own welfare!
Happy New Year!