How many of you have made new year resolutions?
I love making new year’s resolutions. They work great for me. Here is how to make them work.
If you don’t have a resolution yet, make one. 1st January is not the only day to start a great habit or practice. Today or tomorrow is as good.
How do you get started?
The first step is to write down your resolutions. Most of the things that I have achieved, I achieved them after I wrote them down.
Second, choose your goals wisely.
We often tend to select ego based goals – I want to earn x amount, get six-pack abs, travel to x country etc. The problem is that often these goals are not our real priority. For example, maybe your real priority is to get social acceptance, and not quitting smoking or working out hard or working quietly in a corner.
Hence, I want you to think of the worst pains you felt in 2020. To set the right goals in 2021, you have to look at what bothered you or caused pain to you the most in the preceding year.
Was it money? If I think for myself, I didn’t really have much money problem in 2020, so aggressive money goals are nice to have, but not a real necessity for me.
Was it mental health? I had massive mental health issues in 2020, but not in the last 6 months.
What bothers me now is that several of my colleagues are paid less than what I think they deserve. And I want to grow my business revenue to ensure they are getting what they deserve and more for the sacrifice they have made. So my new year’s resolution is around that – how would I grow LawSikho 10x in 2021.
It is a pain I experience every moment of the day, so I do not have to think twice about setting this goal.
What is the equivalent of this for you? What pained you the most in 2020 so if it is just the one thing that you do in 2021, you want to fix that?
Choose your goal accordingly.
There could be more than one such pain, and if so, write them all down.
One more pain I experienced was public humiliation. People who know very little about me accused me of being a sexist and viciously attacked me on social media. I have never cared about public validation before, but now it is a point I want to ensure. I will build a following and a personal brand that is unmatched.
I have also suffered double hip joint surgeries in the past. I have been stuck in bed in the past. I know that my mental health can remain in a good shape only when my physical health is well. For me, good health is not a nice to have concept. It’s a necessity. I know what my life feels like when I do not have it. I know what it means to not be able to walk, run or jump for years. I know what it’s like to be obese and weigh 107 kgs on the scale.
Once you have identified your pains and priorities, then turn to what gives you momentum of successes. There may be something you started to work on that has started to give you some results. Maybe you have done something this year that you are very proud of. It’s time to go further using that momentum. How do you level up?
I had several successes in 2020. iPleaders blog. LawSikho. My own fitness. My social media presence. Daily webinars. Things that I have done well this year – it’s time to take those things to the next level.
Make a list of all these things. Pains of last year. Pride of last year. Then pick the most important things that you are going to work on.
There must be something that you want to crack above all. If you do not succeed in that, all else will be meaningless. If you achieve nothing else but just that one thing, you would think that the year wasn’t so bad. Find out what that is and make that your top priority.
Also, do not set too many goals. One is fine. If you must, set two more. More than 3 are too many to work on at once. If you are a beginner, don’t set more than one.
If you can manage to keep up one resolution for one month, you can always add one more.
Here are some things to do if you want your resolutions to work:
- You need to create a habit instead of trying to become more disciplined. Stop trying to use your willpower to power through things you find hard to do. Try to build small and positive habits instead.
- Set a specific time slot every day when you will do that activity. Do not change the slot. If you do not have a specific time slot for that habit, it won’t work. For example, I always work out at 8 am. I always do webinars at 9 pm. Workshops between 6-9 pm. Such specific time slots make it easy to create a habit and give structure to my day.
- Get help from professionals as far as possible at least until you are able to develop the habit. In whichever area of my life I hired good professionals, I have got great results. When I tried to do things on my own, without the help of experts because I wanted to save money, results were subpar. If you have money, get the help you need. If you don’t, figure it out on your own until you have money.
- Remember that you will not do it perfectly. You will fall off the wagon. It is bound to happen. Do not blame yourself, do not get hyper, it is how the process is. Just gently get back up and resume again. It will happen several times. Just gently get back on with developing the habit again. With time it will become easier.
- You will not get rewards soon. You need to develop the mindset that the practice itself is the reward. You have to love the process, then you become unstoppable.
- If you repeatedly do something and eventually learn to enjoy the stretch, you will reach a point when if you do not do it, you will miss it. This is success. This is where you want to get. For example, if I do not write, if I do not do work that will move the needle, I feel bad at the end of the day. Next day I get up early and start working harder, more conscious than ever that I do not want another day to be wasted. If I do not work out for a few days, I feel terrible, so I have no option but to resume. This makes certain good outcomes in my life a matter of time.
- Never forget that the results you get in life are the sum total of your habits. If you want to change your life, work with your habits.
I believe that these ideas will help you to make resolutions which will matter most to you and to be able to achieve those resolutions in 2021.
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