5 of the most common resolutions:
1. Save money.
2. Lose weight.
3. Quit smoking or drinking.
4. Find a relationship
5. Spend more time with family and friends
Where did all the time go? Here we are, at it again, at the start of another year, with a new set of resolutions, a new future, and another fresh start. But the problem with New Year’s resolutions are twofold.
First: There’s really no commitment device. There’s nothing to bind us to the resolution, or to put it another way, to connect us to our future, so breaking a resolution is easy. Willpower is an expendable resource. Like a muscle, it gets tired, bending, bending, bending, until it breaks. And people are great at justifying anything and everything, so exceptions are truly the rule. Resolutions wither in the face of strong opposition.
Me? I’ve been trying to lose the last 10 pounds for the last 10 years. Haven’t done it. Lost the first 70 – that was work, but it wasn’t too hard. But not gaining it back? That’s a lot harder. And getting to the finish line? That’s the killer. The problem is the here and now has complete sovereignty over the in-1-hour-I’ll-regret-this self. It’s hard to resist the allure of that cookie. And as we get closer and closer to achieving, complacency sets in, giving the here-and-now self that much louder a voice.
Second: We don’t really want to do the resolutions. We want the results, to be sure. But everyone knows the top resolutions. Most have experienced several of them. They stare us down in the corners of our minds in the darkest, smallest places we’ll ever find. They follow us in bright neon lights and technicolor ads each and every day. But truth be told, if we really wanted to do them, we’d have done them, and they wouldn’t keep showing up every year.
And then we have business plans and business planning. Structure, form, process. We have book after book, site after site. We are given inspiration like a tangible good. As if you could buy it off a shelf. How can that be? Still, we’re all looking for the magic. A trick to get us going. The 10-step, 20-minute, 4-day plan that will take us from here to there. After all, running a business is living New Year’s eve every single day. It is the process of constant resolution and reinvention. Day after day, trying to cross the line. Waiting to lose the final 10 pounds.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a bit of that magic. We all have tricks to get things moving. But what it’s really about is just that – getting the ball rolling. Taking a step forward to connect us to our future. To start to really believe that what we do now will alter something then. That’s what lets us put the cookie down. The thought has been “If we knew what we needed to do, we would.” But It really should be “If we knew how to convince ourselves to do it, we would convince ourselves.” Because all too often we surely do know what we need to do. We just don’t know how to make ourselves do it.
Don’t get anchored on the trick. Don’t get stuck chasing one plan after the next. Plans are just devices. Once the motivation comes and the belief is in place, you won’t need them. So use them for what they’re worth, but if there’s nothing handy, here’s one simple thing to remember. Think small. Monumentally small. As simple as simple can get.
Big thinking is fun. It’s exciting. It’s the stuff of dreams. Small actions are scary and fraught with peril. They are uncertain. They can fail. We measure ourselves against them, and they can even wreak havoc with our dreams. But no dream is really worth having if it won’t hold up, and every action is worth so much more, because actions let dreams live. So focus on the small stuff. Turn the big goal into the littlest action. The thing you can do right this minute. The thing you can have done next week. Make it specific. Not 500 new followers on Twitter, but getting in touch with 3 new people today. Not 40 bookings, but spending 2 hours today on your marketing or spending 4 hours building your relationships. Make your goals actionable, simple, and pertinent, and it will let you start moving this second. Large goals are a target, but the path is too hazy and the journey too tenuous to stand on their own. Pair them down to little things, and little will become big. Then when you hit 2013, you’ll know exactly where all the time went.
Coming Tomorrow: Safety and Risk.
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