Do This to Make Your New Year’s Resolution a Reality.

Every year, at the very beginning, there is a general activity many people do, that is, setting up the plan for the new year.

There are many ways of doing it, like writing them down, memorizing or just kind of instructing us what we want to do this year. “I’m going to exercise three times a week”, or “I’m going to give up on soft drinks and I will drink water instead”, or “I’m going dedicate one hour a day to that internet business which will bring me xxx additional dollars each month”.

Most of these new “habits” we want to adopt are things that we either never did before or we tried and failed and, by the art of magic, we think this year it’s going to be the right one.

When we do this and set up new ‘commitments’ for the New Year, we feel empowered, we feel like we have already achieved something great. I have sometimes felt my heart beating faster, under a sense of deep emotion, thinking of what I am going to do and what my final result is going to be.

We visualize ourselves at the stage when we have been performing our habits for a long period of time. We see ourselves with many pounds less, with more body mass, with more money in our bank account, and we feel great…but this feeling does not last very long.

We start facing our daily reality.

We start strong the very next few days and, as days go by, we start ‘skipping’ our commitment. In the beginning, with very clear reasons (we are experts in rationalizing everything we do), we convince ourselves that it’s OK, that we could not avoid breaking the commitment but, from tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.

But we already know what will happen: we are going to stop the new habit we committed at the beginning of the year and we will eventually come back to the previous situation. This happens to the vast majority of people and, based on the law of averages, we are likely to do the same, unless…we really do something different this time.

Persistence is one of the most precious qualities of human beings. As Napoleon Hill said

“Persistence is to the quality of a person what carbon is to steel”

It hardens our character, it makes us stronger (not only physically), and it also makes us invincible. Persistence can substitute many other weaknesses we can have, but there is no substitute for persistence.

If we can achieve whatever we want just persisting on it despite the ups and downs on our daily results; if persistence is so valuable and magic for us to achieve whatever we want, then, how can we increase our persistency level?

I’m sure you would ask this question.

I do not know any magic bullet valid for everyone, but you are not everyone, you are unique, with your own values, experience, desires, and goals. So, my question to you is, based on your own situation, the following: what do you think you can do to increase your persistence and keep your new year resolution becoming a reality?

There is a curious tendency of the human beings: although we know the answers to our questions, we use to ask to others (who know much less about ourselves than we do) and tend to follow their advice.

If this is your preference (as it is also for me as a human being) I’m going to make a suggestion so, this year, we are going to make something different to beat that lack of commitment when following the new habits you have set up for yourself:

Step 1: Write down the new habit you want to achieve and read it first thing when you get up in the morning and just before going to bed.

I know, it sounds silly, but just do it. You do not need any significant effort or time. So, no excuse not to do it.

Step 2: Share it with a friend and agree to send him/her a text message every day, telling how you have achieved your target today.

If you have a Facebook group, commit to your friends and post daily information. If you have a coach, tell him what you are committed to do.

This is called holding yourself accountable.

Keep doing it for 66 days, that is the time research shows that a new habit takes to implement.

You can give a try to this little trick.

In any case, you have nothing to lose. This has worked for many people and, the worse thing that can happen to you is that it would not work, so you would not achieve what you committed to for this year, as it happened to you before.

It seems it’s worth to take the decision of doing something different this year.

If you find problems in implementing your new habits or have any question or doubt, please contact me here, or check Eduard’s Coaching Program.