Making New Year’s Resolutions – and Achieving Them

We’ve all done it. The calendar starts creeping towards January 1st and we start making New Year’s resolutions: going to the gym five times a week, quitting smoking, losing those extra pounds… Sound familiar? Unfortunately, it seems that most resolutions are toast before the toasting of the New Year is over — 88% of them are gone with two months. Who or what is to blame for the failure of accomplishing your goals? Is it the resolutions – or us?

TEXT HEATHER DE PAULO

We need to set goals to accomplish the things we desire in life. If we weren’t able to set goals and accomplish them, we would not be in the successful positions we are today. Think about how long it took you to get your education, start your business and begin paying yourself. Most likely it took many years of perseverance. However, the New Year resolutions most people make are huge goals, like dropping 50 pounds, quitting smoking, and generally changing complete lifestyle habits in a matter of months. Rather than realizing that this isn’t realistic, we set these huge goals, get discouraged when they aren’t accomplished in a few months and then give up. Imagine you gave up so quickly when you started your business? Why, then, do we fail miserably at accomplishing our New Year resolutions?

How can you keep New Year resolutions achievable?

Keep Your Goals Specific
Following are some tips to lead you in the right direction:

• Keep your goals specific. With goal setting, what’s usually missing are the action steps. People think about what they want, but don’t think through what it will take to get there. Rather than making a vague goal like, “I want my business to grow,” make it something concrete: “This year I will double my profits by increasing my customer base twofold and reevaluating my expenditures.” Then you can more clearly outline your small goals to achieve the ultimate goal.

• When you sit down to make your resolutions, think big to small, like a pyramid. Set your ultimate goal and then set the small goals that will lead you to achieve it. For example, if you want to be promoted to manager of your department (your ultimate goal), your next tier down on the pyramid may be, “In the next three months I will take a management course and work on my public speaking skills.” This can be broken down even further into which management course, how many days you will commit to it, etc. If you don’t break your big goal into small, achievable goals, you will drop your resolution like a hot potato.

• When you are making your goals, keep it realistic. You may want to take night courses, spend longer hours working on growing your business or get to the gym five days a week, but what about your obligations at home – your wife/husband, kids, household — yourself? When you are outlining your goals and steps to accomplish them, it’s important to consider what’s actually doable. On this same note, keep your resolutions to just a few — choose the most important ones. Too many goals will be overwhelming and will ultimately lead to failure.

• The biggest factor in determining success in accomplishing your resolutions is your level of motivation to achieve them. You may have the best intentions, but if you don’t have the strong desire to stay focused on your tasks at hand, you will not succeed. You may want to lose 30 pounds, but when confronted with that extra glass of wine or that huge piece of cake, what will keep you on track is your motivator – what will motivate you to stay on course?

Usually when we think of New Year resolutions, we think of health goals. However, resolutions can pertain to any ambitions – personal or professional. The end of the year is a good time to reflect on the progress of your business over the past year and plan how you want your business to develop in the new year and beyond. Here are six the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for business success:*

• Learn how to delegate and do more of it. There are so many things to do when running a business and we think we need to do all of them. At the end of the day, we wonder why we’re so tired and frazzled and have no time or energy to do anything else. Determine your personal return on investment and let someone else do some of the tasks for a change. Delegation is the key to a healthy work-life balance.

• Make business planning a weekly event. Planning is vital if you want a healthy, growing business. Business planning lets you take stock of what worked and what didn’t work and helps you set new directions or adjust old goals. Set aside time each week, or even daily, to review, adjust, and look forward. Frequent planning not only helps you stay on track, you’ll also feel more focused and relaxed.

Usually when we think of New Year resolutions, we think of health goals. However, resolutions can pertain to any ambitions – personal or professional

• Learn something new. What you choose to learn may be directly related to your business or completely unrelated. Learning something new will add to your skills and add a new dimension of interest to your life. Depending on how you choose to learn, you may meet new and interesting people, who may become customers, colleagues, or friends. If you are already practicing delegation, you will have time to do this for yourself!

• Join a new business organization or networking group. There’s nothing like talking to other business people for sparking new ideas, refining old ones, and making contacts. Whether it’s a group specifically designed for networking or an organization dedicated to a particular type of business, in person or online, making the effort to be a part of a group will revitalize you and your business.

• Put time for you on your calendar. All work and no play is a recipe for mental and physical disaster. If you have trouble freeing up time to do the things you enjoy, write time regularly into your schedule for “me time” and stick to that commitment. If you don’t invest in yourself, who will?

• Drop what’s not working for you and move on. All products aren’t going to be super sellers, all sales methods aren’t going to work for everyone and all suppliers or contractors aren’t going to be ideally suited to your business. If something isn’t working for you, stop doing it. Don’t invest a lot of energy into trying to make the unworkable workable. Move on. Something better will turn up.

Most of us look at the New Year as the perfect opportunity to set meaningful career and lifestyle goals. The key is to stay mindful of those objectives, have an action plan to execute them and avoid distractions that derail us.

Did you make resolutions this year? Be one of the 10% who do stick with their resolutions and goals for the New Year. You just might change your life.

*Reference: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/management/a/bizresolutions.htm