A study done by the Statistic Brain Research Institute found that only 39% of people in their twenties achieve their resolution each year and that number drops by a staggering 14% for people over 50. Why do so many of us have trouble following through? The answer can be simpler than you think.
“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.”
Walt Disney
Walt Disney once said “The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting”. The same thing with achieving new year’s resolution. To achieve success, you have to keep going.
Commit to these five rules and turn any resolution into an achieved success:
RULE #1: Write 12 month goals in 3 categories: Personal, Professional and Self
Personal:
This can simply be boiled down to LOVE. It consists of all your relationships with other people, both loved ones, and strangers a like. As human beings that are supposed to make connections with others. A 2013 review of 40 international studies suggests that volunteering can add years to your life, with some evidence pointing to a 22 percent reduction in mortality. If a drug company had a drug that could promise a 22% decrease in the chances of dying, the stock would go through the roof.
Physical: Career, finances, house, car, all the “things” in our lives.
Self: This would include things like meditation, self-help and development, developing as a better person. As human beings, we are born with an innate drive of purpose. Self development and exploration is essential in living a content life.
Try and write goals in each of these categories.
Break your goals down into 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day goals. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), this is called chucking down. Or simply put, “by the mile, it’s a pile but by the inch, it’s a pinch”.
RULE #2: Define your motivation for each of your goals
If you do not have a clear picture in your minds eye what you are working for, you are destined for failure. At the same time, we want to imagine the pain of not accomplishing this goal. Oftentimes, there are hidden motivations for our actions. All our actions, both good and bad (more on this in rule #3), have a motivation. Find out what that is and you program your brain for success.
There is a technique that can help you program your goals into your brain. It is kind of like downloading a program off of the internet. We need to delete the program with the virus in it and update the new and improved program. The technique goes like this: You image you are watching a movie. You are going to start with the negative that you came up with if you don’t follow through on your goal. Imagine it is playing on the movie screen. Now you are going fade the color until its black and white. You are going to turn down the volume. And you are going to shrink the image.
Next image the positive outcome of completing your goal. Blow the image up. Make it larger than life. Make the colors vibrant, the sound loud, smell the smells. Make it as dramatic as possible.
If you practice this technique several times a day, you will automatically program your brain to succeed. The mind works by association. What you can vividly imagine, ardently believe and enthusiastically act upon will inevitably come to be. If we replace old self-sabatoging patterns with success triggers, miracles start to happen.
One technique that has helped many people, including myself is the use of a vision board. A vision board is a poster board with photo representation of your goals. Here is a picture I took of my vision board. You can see it is still a work in progress. That is a good thing, it means I am forced to explore deeper within myself as to what I really want in life.
RULE #3: Identify barriers to success
This includes your limiting beliefs, physical barriers like finances, logistics, etc. All your actions in life alway have a reason. And that reason is survival. Everything we do, from having friends, to food cravings, to making bad decisions, is all motivated by survival. In the case of not being able to achieve your goals, your brain associates either a reward from the failure, like a child getting a cookie every time he cries, or a pain if there is success, such as the thought of failure on a grand scale causes you to make sure you dont succeed.
One way to overcome these problems is to first identify them. Once you do, I highly recommend you try something called EFT. That stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. In a nut shell, EFT reprograms the brain to associate the trigger (such as fear of speaking) with a different stimulus as opposed to one of fear. one of tonification of the body. Then in the future when you are exposed to the trigger (public speaking) your brain will now associate it with tonification.
RULE #4: Positive thinking
Studies have determined that the average person has about 50,000 thoughts a day. And a whopping 70-80% are negative thought. Dr. Shad Helmstetter says the average 18 yer old has heard the word no or you can t do that approximately 148,000 times. Be conscious about what you let into your brain. Remember that advertising companies get paid millions of dollars to get you to think a certain way.
Change your language. Stop the negative talk. Words are vibrational energy. Einstein said that:
“everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
Simply put, Einstein is telling us that we are creating our reality by our vibrational energy. To often we use negative language without even being conscious of it. How many times have you answered “not bad” when someone asked you how you are doing? Next time, someone asks are you are, break the pattern. Say something like Great. Or if things are not going so well, try something like “Getting better every day”.
Attitudes are contagious, surround yourself with people who reflect the values of your goals. If you want to be a singe, you should have musician friends. If you want to get back into fitness you would do much better to achieve your goals if you surround yourself with others that are going through similar journeys. You are who you surround yourself with. You are the company you keep.
RULE #5: Make your health a priority
Our friend Zig Ziglar asks us the question if you were given a 10 million dollar race horse, how would you treat it? Would you feed it poisonous food? Would you subject it to constant stress? Would you let it stay in the stall all day without much exercise? or would you make sure it got the best care you could afford to give it? The point is, you have an asset far more valuable than that horse. I am talking about your inborn Innate Intelligence and its limitless potential. Your health and vitality are not simply the absence of disease but the maximum expression of that innate intelligence. Your health is a reflection of your standards. Expect more from yourself, you deserve it.
PRO TIP
Print this article out and read it every morning before you begin your day. Then review it again at night and grade your daily performance. Remember, it is about progress, not perfection.
