Happy New Year to you and your family! I trust it was epic!
New year brings with it, besides a hang over for most people, excitement. Excitement that the last year has gone and good riddance… or the limitless possibilities of who we could become over the next 12 months.
It may even follow a thought of some goals around us becoming an even better version of ourselves – lose weight, get fitter, save more, drink less or overseas holidays, etc etc.
We resolve ourselves to some resolutions in our own head or maybe on paper.
We sign up for that gym membership, by February we’ll have stopped going and won’t go back again for the rest of the year…or something along those lines.
Inevitably 92% of us will fall short of our well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions.
The challenge doesn’t come from setting a new goal or a new resolution. The challenge is when the excitement of limitless possibilities wears off and we get back in to our normal routines of how we live our lives.
It’s even more challenging as we get older. From around 35 years old most of our life is done on autopilot. We do the same or very similar things everyday, around 95% of the time. Making it even harder for us to challenge ourselves to do new or different things in our life.
How can we challenge ourselves to breakthrough and become a better version of ourselves?
Here’s my top tips to becoming a better version of yourself:
WRITE IT DOWN
You’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.
FIT IT IN
Make your new goal/ resolution fit in with your life. For me, I love getting up before 5am. I’m not going to schedule time to write a book for example anytime after 6pm. It just wouldn’t work for me. Make the goal fit your life.
SCHEDULE IT
Schedule the time you need to achieve your goal in your diary.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Sharing your goals with someone else can double your likelihood of achieving them. Grab a mate and keep each other accountable for that gym session.
MAINTAINABLE
Trying to do something like exercise or meditate everyday, when you don’t do these things very often it is just setting yourself up for failure.
Set yourself up to win: start your goal by doing something once a week, then twice a week, etc. Think about setting a goal that will be a habit for you in a decade rather than a failing in the first week.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
One step at a time. What’s the smallest and easiest step you can take towards your goals right now? Do that. As I mentioned before a lot of our day can be on autopilot, add in little bits of change and build on that.
ADAPT
Something is going to throw you off course, life happens. At some point we’ll fall off the horse. That’s ok. Get back on the horse and start again. Just because you failed this time around doesn’t mean you have to stop.
WHY
Ask yourself why you’re doing this stuff in the first place.
Then use that answer to ask yourself why again.
Do this about 5 times and you’ll have your WHY.
REWARD YOURSELF
Around 80% of our thoughts are negative. We are pretty good at giving ourselves a hard time when we fall off the wagon, a form of negative reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement can be good but not if we do it all the time. Instead, set up rewards to positively reinforce your behaviour, which can increase your motivation to ‘stay on the wagon’.
Sam
