Are you setting resolutions or goals?

So now that Christmas has come and gone for another year, many of our thoughts will be turning to the new year and new year Resolutions. To be quite honest I have always disliked this idea of new year resolutions. 

Typically a new year's resolution is based on something you are not doing, but feel you should be doing. So the question becomes, if you should be doing this thing, then why aren't you? And why are you going to start now? And what makes you think if you haven't been doing it, all of a sudden the magic is going to happen and it's going to work this time? Very rarely does this actually work. Sure in the beginning it seems to work, because you have the new year's energy pushing you, but like most treadmills the new year resolution finds its way into the corner of the basement and collect dust and unused clothing.

So what do we do about this? Well first thing. We are going to take the new years resolution idea and throw it in the trash can. The next thing is you are going to do is take a pencil and paper and write down a goal. Then you are going to write down why you WANT to achieve this goal. Then you are going to write down HOW you are going to achieve this goal. Have you noticed I said GOAL not GOALS. Set yourself up for success by doing one goal. Once that one goal starts to take off and starts to gain a life of its own and becomes part of your daily life 3 months from now, you will more than likely start to look at another goal or more importantly expand on your existing goal. 

Now the hard part comes into play. This goal you want to achieve for 2020 needs to become a non-negotiable part of your life. Meaning no excuses. Meaning I have to do this everyday or I will be pissed at myself because I am allowing myself to fall short and that is not acceptable. When you get to this point your 2020 goal has the greatest chance of being achieved. 

At the end of 2018 I decided that I was going to do 30 burpees everyday. Why? because I hated them and I needed to better challenge myself. How? Put them into my daily workouts. My workouts where already a non-negotiable, so adding the burpees should not be that difficult. Soon I found out that 30 burpees was easy and not enough of a challenge, so it turned into 50 burpees per daily workout. Eventually as I got better and faster it went from how many I could do daily to how many I could do in a year. The goal built on itself because the goal became a part of my life and was turned into a non-negotiable.

This is how new year's goals work. It is not a resolution that either can pass or fail. Make your goals habitual.