What resolution could you make for this next year that, if you were successful in making the change, would really improve your life?
Do you want to give up smoking? Maybe you want to go on a diet, lose some weight and get into shape? Perhaps you want to learn a language? It could be that you want to achieve a better work-life balance, change careers or start a new pastime.
Whatever it is you that want to achieve, you need to do some thinking if you want your resolution to stick and you want to succeed in your goal. Here are some questions that you can ask in order to make your decision more effective.
Why do you want to make the resolution?
What is driving your decision? Why do you want to make a change? Understanding why we want to do something helps us to establish our motivation. This is important, as we need to really value something if we are going to succeed. If we are going to make a change, especially something that will be a challenge, then we need to prioritise it. The first couple of days after making your decision are likely to be the easiest, as you are carried along by your enthusiasm. After that, it gets harder and when it does you will start to question why you made that particular choice in the first place. Spend some time writing down the answers to the ‘why’ question. This will help fix the answers in your mind and remind you of their importance when things get tough.
Where do you see yourself when you achieve your goal?
What are you dreaming of? What is the picture of the thing you want to achieve? Being able to envision the endpoint is a very important psychological aid to success. If you want to change your career then maybe the picture in your minds-eye is of you walking into your ideal workplace for the first day of your new job. If you want to learn a language the dream might be you ordering a meal for some friends in another country. Whatever it is, make that picture real to you. Use your imagination to make the colours bright, the sounds loud, the smells and tastes inviting, and you will be consciously and subconsciously drawn towards that idea.
What is your definition of success?
How will you know when you have achieved your purpose? What is the finish line? As well as having a dream it is important to identify the exact parameters for success so you have something definite to aim for. This is often called a mission statement and it should be something short, memorable and clear in meaning. For example, if you wanted to get in better shape your mission could be “To lose ten pounds in weight” or “To run a half-marathon”. However you craft your mission statement, make sure that your terms are specific, so you will be certain when you have fulfilled them.
How will you achieve your aim?
Once you have defined what you want to achieve, you then need to work out how you are going to do it. In other words, you need a plan. One simple way to make a plan is to break down your goal into several smaller tasks. For instance, if you are learning a language – even in just three to six months – it can be hard to measure your progress. Therefore you can set smaller steps that feel more tangible; such as learning ten new words a day or setting yourself a week to finish a particular section of your course. You can then note these steps down in a journal, or on a calendar, and you have a plan. Writing the tasks down in a to-do list will also give you the satisfaction of ticking each thing off as you achieve it. This will help to reinforce your motivation.
Who can you speak to that has the experience or skills to help you succeed? There could be someone you know who has already done the thing you want to do. Alternatively, you might just want someone you trust who can support you in your goal. It may be that you want a person outside your normal network such as a professional coach. Whether the person you choose is an expert or not, winning through is much easier if you are accountable to someone else. As soon as you have made your resolution share your decision with another person. Give that person permission to regularly challenge you on how you are doing. If they know you well they will recognise how best to encourage you: whether that is a kind word or a kick up the backside!
When do you want to achieve your aim?
The New Year feels like a time of new beginnings and is opportune for making decisions. As well as picking a good time to make a resolution it is also worthwhile thinking about when you want to complete your goal. A whole year is perhaps too big a time frame, so it is worth identifying something shorter and breaking the goal into smaller tasks if necessary. For example, if you wanted to quit smoking then your mission could be “To not purchase, accept or smoke a single cigarette for the next forty days.” This statement gives clear parameters (not to purchase, accept or smoke a cigarette) as well as a timed measure of success; here being forty days. Forty days may sound arbitrary but studies have shown that you can establish a new habit in twenty to forty days. In other words, if you can create a new pattern in life for that long, there is a good chance that you will have established a more permanent change.
Which things will stop you from achieving your goal?
What are the risks that you face? What could cause you to fail? Whatever it is you are choosing to do, you can be sure that it will not be as easy to achieve as you would like. Take some time to consider the obstacles in your path. Identify the top five or ten circumstances that could hinder your progress and then make a plan to avoid or reduce those risks. Being aware of the potential risks and having a contingency plan will make sure that any setback need not lead to failure.
Now go for it!
If you have addressed all these questions then you should have a very good chance of success with your decision. Let me wish you all the best with your resolution and I hope this next year is a great one for you!
If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions
About The Right Questions
The Right Questions is for leaders who want coaching towards greater clarity, purpose and success. We are all leaders (whether we know it or not) as we all have influence. So the question is, what are you doing with your influence?
Wherever you are on your leadership journey, I hope that you find resources on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.
I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and coaching them to achieve their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!
New Year is one of the most popular time to set goals. The challenge is, to achieve a goal you usually have to change habits, and that is often the hardest bit.
Let me guess the sort of things you want to achieve, could it be one of the following:
Exercise more
Eat healthier
Save money
Lose weight
Reduce stress
Stick to a budget
Get more sleep
Spend more time with family
Learn a new skill
Travel more
Actually, I am no clairvoyant! These 10 items are from a survey conducted by YouGov in 2018. The list is also very similar to studies on goals set by people in many other years.
The question is, if we are setting the same goals every year, is that because we are not achieving them? If so, why is that?
Even if you did not set yourself a strict New Year resolution one or more of these goals would likely be something you would like to do anyway. Just because you did not set an aim at the beginning of January does not mean you cannot do it now.
Maybe you have not set a specific objective because you are worried you may not achieve it. Failure can be very disheartening. If we understand why change is difficult than you can be less hard on yourself. Goals need to be realistic among other things (see SMART goals).
It’s all good and well having a lofty goal but we all know how hard it is to achieve – particularly when it means changing a habit. This means the goal is not just a one-off action. What we are trying to do is create multiple actions that compound and reinforce improvement over time.
Don’t worry if you are struggling to do this. If you have not managed to keep your goals thus far, you are in good company. Business Insider polled over 1000 people and found that 80% of people were failing to keep their New Year’s resolutions by February.
This is a shame as resolutions are generally about creating new (and hopefully better) habits. Arguably, 9 out of 10 of the list above are primarily about modifying behaviours. And habits generally take longer than a month to be embedded.
Phillippa Lally conducted a 12 week study on changing behaviour and found that on average it took more like two months (or 66 days to be more exact) for a new activity to become a habit. This is longer than the 21 days popularised by Maxwell Maltz (1960) or the 30 days advocated by Marc Reklau (2014).
How do you effectively create a new habit?
Well first, given the evidence above, you need to give yourself an appropriate amount of time to embed your new behaviour. A couple of months being a good benchmark.
The next thing is identifying the habit loop that exists and how to modify it. Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit (2013), shows that we need to break down habits. We need to identify the cue (the stimulus), the routine (our action or behaviour) and the reward(the payoff). Once we understand the cues to behaviours, we can experiment with rewards to instil new routines.
This behaviour loop is actually a decision-making cycle. The thing is that as the behaviour becomes deeply embedded it becomes a habit – an intuitive or automatic response – rather than a conscious choice.
For example, I tend to get a little hungry mid-morning and mid-afternoon. I often want a snack. When the blood sugar is low it is very easy to grab something unhealthy to eat at this point . For example, a sweet biscuit, chocolate bar or similar would be my thing. But I know this is not good for me, therefore I have tried other replacement snacks. I have experimented with various options, and some things just don’t hit the spot. But, I have found that I have a real thing for hummus. I know hummus is nothing like a chocolate digestive, but it turns out that if there is some hummus around (especially with a carrot or some sweet pepper) then there is a good chance I can avoid a sugary snack. It does not always work but I have nudged that behaviour in the right direction. I still find it hard to resist biscuits laid out at a meeting or someone else’s house, but no one is perfect!
The trick is finding the reward mechanism that works for you with the habit you want to modify.
Last year I had set out to run an ultra-marathon in the summer. So, I knew I needed to do more exercise. I also wanted to read more, as I love learning. The trouble was these goals were effectively competing with one another. With the demands of work and being a parent, time was limited. I was also finding that my time to read was generally just before bed and then I was too tired to properly absorb new material.
It was at that point that one of my coaching clients introduced me to audiobooks via Audible. I already listened to a good number of podcasts, so I knew it was achievable to listen and learn while doing light exercise or routine tasks. With this knowledge in hand, I signed up for a free trial to give it a go.
The free trial was for 30 days. By the end of the trial period, I knew it was for me. I had already managed to get through two good books that it would have otherwise taken me at least a month to read each one. The added bonus was that most of the time I had been listening I had also either been doing exercise or commuting.
It actually helped me to amend some other habits too. I was enjoying listening so much that I started giving myself more time between meetings in London so I could walk, rather than use public transport, and get some more exercise, listening and thinking time in. You could argue that I saved money and reduced stress as well, so inadvertently I was tending to some other popular resolutions!
Achieving the goal with better behaviours
Suffice to say by the end of the year I had completed my 100km ultra marathon (the CCC race in Alps) and listened to over 12 great non-fiction books (some I listen to twice in that time) that have all helped me in my work and life this year. It has worked so well that I have signed up for a new race this year and continued my Audible subscription.
So yes, this has become something of a shameless plug for Audible but I really can recommend it, especially if your goals are similar to mine. You can click on the link here for a free trial and see for yourself:
Audiobook Life Hack
By the way, one little life hack I have also earned this year is to listen to my podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5X speed. This means that you can still hear everything clearly but you can get through a lot more material in the time you have available. Give it a try!
In my next post I will share some of the great books I have listened to over the past year. Hopefully you will enjoy them too!
If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions
About The Right Questions
The Right Questions is for leaders who want coaching towards greater clarity, purpose and success. We are all leaders (whether we know it or not) as we all have influence. So the question is, what are you doing with your influence?
Wherever you are on your leadership journey, I hope that you find resources on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.
I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and coaching them to achieve their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!
