February 1st is a great day to set New Year Resolutions. You may be reading this and shouting ‘January 1st is the day for those!’, but in this article I will explain the 3 pitfalls around the New Year Day resolutions, and how you can avoid them if you go for February instead…
Ok, let’s dive right in, here are the three downfalls of setting resolutions on the first day of the year…
You don’t believe them, they aren’t defined, and you don’t take any action towards them.
It’s hardly a surprise when they fail then is it? We can all laugh about them failing again ‘like they do every year’, and the chance to really make some changes in your life has gone for another year, at which point you’ll make the same mistakes again.
Or, you could do it a different way, which goes like this…
You decide to take the goal achievement process seriously. This means you believe the goal will happen in the first place! No more jokes about failure, because they send a terrible message to your brain about establishing failure as the predetermined outcome.
Then, once you have decided to take your goal seriously, and you believe it, you can move on to the next step, which is to define it. A goal has to be defined, because defining it will let you know when you have achieved it, it will give you a finishing line to cross.
With that finishing line set, you can then work out what you need to do next to get you closer to that line rather than further away.
At this point you have made real progress, and are already miles away from the laughing half hearted New Year resolution. You’re now ready for the third major step…
Take action. Don’t just think about the end goal, don’t just visualise. Don’t just work out the next step, but *take* that next step! Then the next one, then the next, and as you build habit and momentum you will feel the progress sweep you forwards.
Yes, you may have setbacks, but that’s part of the process, and it all takes you closer to that goal you have set and believed.
So, maybe you set goals on Jan 1st which have already failed, maybe you didn’t. In either case, think long and hard about the value of Feb 1st resolutions instead, and you’ll get much better value from the effort!
‘Til Next Time,
Health & Happiness,
Gordon
P.S. I love feedback, so leave a comment or share via facebook, twitter etc!
P.P.S. If you think you want to do it properly, then coaching will help you. If you take a look at my coaching programme, you also get my free 8 step goal achievement formula while you’re there!
