New Year Resolutions and Goal Setting: Why do we always come up short?
Let’s talk about New year resolutions, some of us love to set them, some of us don’t; but ultimately all of us look at the new year as a fresh start. We are either leaving negativity behind us, continuing on with something great or more commonly looking at the new year as a chance to do so something better or become more.
As the new year approaches, this is the perfect time to talk about the New year resolutions that you and I and a lot of people failed to meet from the prior year and the new ones sure to be set for 2020. Let’s take a second to analyze why we repeatedly fail to fulfill those commitments to ourselves. First, let’s look at the goals that make the top of the list every year.
The top resolution goals every year never change, and I’m sure you can guess which ones they are.
1. Diet or eat Healthy
2. Exercise more/ lose weight
3. Being more successful financially
It is important to mention that you should be commended for setting a resolution goal every year. Individual resolutions are all different, but the aim stands to be the same for all us. We want to be better individuals, which will hopefully compound into more individual successes in different areas of our lives.
Only about 8 percent of people succeed at reaching their resolution goals.
Why is it so hard to accomplish goals?
The two main reasons we fail to reach individual goals are:
1. The expectation that we should do everything perfectly, the moment we don’t we use that as an excuse to quit.
2. We simply have too much going on. Too many goals.
The 5/25 Rule
Warren Buffett made this rule famous a few years ago, and I’ve used it since the first time I heard it. Essentially the rule states; if you were to make a list of the top 25 goals you have, eliminate the bottom 20 and focus only on the top 5. The reason for this is that many of us without realizing focus too much on things we kind of want rather than the things we really want, and that leads us to not accomplishing much. So, take a second to make your list and anything that doesn’t make the top 5 should be eliminated.
We all know the secret to being successful, we just use it at our convenience.
Think on that a little more. What was the last thing you wanted really badly, and what did you do to get it?
The easiest time that I’ve ever had losing weight was when one of my buddies and I had a month-long bet that at the end of the month, one of us would lose more weight than the other.
For 30 days nothing else mattered to me, my competitive nature and the free lunch at the end of it was enough to drive me to get up at 5am every day for a month to workout, follow a strict diet, all without questioning why I was putting myself through it. I already knew the answer.
How many of you have a similar story? Whether it be a bet, defiantly proving our parents or our friends wrong about a relationship, or a career choice. We all have those moments where we’ve exhibited the same intense will, focus and motivation to succeed.
We all have it in us, we just use those skills very sparingly. More commonly when we are looking to prove someone wrong.
So what does it take?
1. Goal setting
2. Keeping a vision of your goal in front of you everyday
3. Consistency
In your moments of difficulty, you will ask why? The answer comes from always knowing the reason you set your goals and keeping that reason in front of you every day. Always remember to focus on your main goals vs too many things at a time. You’ve already proven you have what it takes to do it in the short term, accomplishing your long-term goals are no different.