Millennials, Here’s How To Stick To Your New Year’s Resolution This Year
December 19, 2016
With 2017 right around the corner, the buzz about New Year’s Resolutions is just beginning to sound in.
Maybe you’ve already started sketching out a weight loss plan, complete with a pilates membership and a monthly food delivery subscription.
Or… maybe you’re feeling somewhat resigned about the whole thing altogether. If you’re anything like the average American, you’ve probably made more resolutions than you can count that didn’t last more than a few weeks or months past January 1st.
The unfortunate truth is that only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s Resolutions. The rest fall off due to lack of motivation, stress, and resistance to change.
If you want to be successful, you’ll need a fuel source far more powerful than sheer willpower or discipline alone.
One Millennial goal-slasher has a formula to help you stick to your resolution all-year-round.
Meet S. Brian Smith, a serial entrepreneur and world-class leadership coach with an impressive track record. Smith has coached 700+ entrepreneurs, worked with hundreds of small businesses, raised millions in capital, and led several multi-million dollar projects. He’s also a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only group hailed as “America’s Most Elite Entrepreneur Organization.”
This week on The Unconventional Life Podcast, Smith takes us under the hood of his exceptional goal-setting strategy to help you secure your spot in the 8% and achieve the results you desire for 2017.
Focus on the Big Picture
Instead of just honing in on one area of your life to improve, zoom out and take a big-picture approach to complete wellness. This will ensure you’re not hyper-focused on one area of your life while other areas suffer.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, the main reason we pursue goals is to feel happier and more fulfilled in our lives. While setting the goal of earning more money may be one component to feeling happier, it certainly isn’t a standalone solution. The last thing you want to be is more wealthy yet exhausted with poor health.
Smith says that true fulfillment arises from a foundation of physical, mental, interpersonal, and financial health. By focusing on each pillar in conjunction with the others, we can be certain we’re nurturing the full scope of our personal well-being.
Establish a Baseline
Within each pillar, define a baseline level of wellness that you’ll be able to commit to and sustain over the course of your lifetime. This might look like knowing you’re healthy and feeling comfortable in your own body, or having relationships that support you to grow as a person. Notice the improvement in how you feel with wellness-based goals like these versus vanity-based ones like “weighing 175 pounds” or “becoming more popular.”
“When you create a baseline that you’re willing to accept for those pillars and then maintain it, that gives you the stability that you don’t ever lean on any one pillar as a crutch for the others. You guarantee a minimum level of wellness in every area of your life,” Smith says.
Align With Your Values
“There’s a bodily response we feel when our values are in conflict,” says Smith.
Make sure the goals you’re setting out to achieve are in alignment with your core values. For example, is your goal to lose 10 pounds in alignment with your core value to be healthy? If the way in which you’re going about losing weight is unhealthy, you will feel in conflict and likely be unsuccessful in your weight loss efforts. To reconcile this, you can design a weight loss plan that feels nourishing and respectful to your body so you don’t feel any part of you in resistance to losing weight.
It’s nearly impossible to reach a goal if you feel like you’re fighting with or dishonoring yourself along the way. By aligning with your values, you can streamline your efforts to achieve success much more easily.
Create Accountability
It can be challenging to make your goals a reality without the support of others. By enrolling others in your goals, you can create an accountability network that uplifts you when you need it most. You might need to have conversations with the people close to you to get them on board with the new direction you’re taking your life. If you feel like they won’t approve of what you want to do, this can be a huge reason for you to remain in inaction and not achieve what you really want.
“Are you willing to endure that job for the next 5 years or are you willing to have conversations with the people close to you that may last 30 minutes but once they’re over you can live your own life? Too many of us just sit there and want to use someone else as our excuse for not taking action, and we’re just playing the victim,” says Smith.
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