Making Resolutions

How many times have you started the year with high hopes and great expectations, only to see your new-found resolve slowly and inexorably seeping into the slough of despond within weeks? If this has happened to you – and be honest – then this might help you give yourself better results this time.

We usually have more wishes than we have time or opportunities to realise them. While you can be, do or have almost anything you want, you cannot be, do or have everything you want. So, the first step is to choose from all of your wishes those few that you currently have the time and the opportunity to put into action. The rest will remain wishes for the future. This laser-focus gives an immense advantage over a more scatter-gun approach.

*Top-tip: select those wishes highest on the scale for both feasibility and desirability.

Once the choice is made you will find that your goals fall into one of two categories: they are either “Be” goals (e.g. be more organised), or “Do” goals (e.g. sort out that cutlery drawer). We will have greater success with the “Do” version, because we are more effective at handling a “Do” task. We take any set-back as a prompt to finding new ways of mastering the causes. With “Be” goals any specific lack of success is taken as a reflection on our innate abilities. Our reaction is often to give up.

 
*Top-tip: break your “Be” goals (e.g. be a safer driver) into a series “Do” goals (e.g. take an advanced driving course).

As strange as it may sound, the key to success with our resolutions is what lies behind them. What causes us to make that particular resolution, rather than any other? Quite simply – motivation, or our desire to seek that particular outcome for ourselves.

We tend to express our motives at the highest level, such as “get a better job” or “improve my relationships” rather than looking at the needs being addressed, such as a higher income, or more time with the family. However, it is worth exploring what lies behind each of our higher order goals. There is usually more than one way of meeting any given need and it is our needs that our resolutions should serve.

*Top-tip: identify the need being served by any resolution. Ask yourself what other ways there are to this same end.

 
Our motives take two forms: away and towards. Our away motives are about what we don’t want anymore, such as I don’t want to be overweight, I don’t want to smoke, I don’t want to work here. Our towards motives are about what we want to be, do, have or become, such as I want to be an Olympic gymnast, I want to get promoted, I want to own a yacht and sail the Mediterranean.

Our away motivation is more powerful in the early stages of making a change; it has great traction to help us get started. However, its two main faults then kick in. Like the heat from a fire, its strength lessens the further away you get from the undesired state, so you begin to drift back again. And, worst of all, our minds find it almost impossible to hold a negative – try not to think of a shoe without first thinking of just that. This puts at the front of our minds the very thing we do not want. That is not very helpful!

The eminent psychiatrist John H Reitmann once said that "It takes an average person almost twice as long to understand a sentence that uses a negative approach than it does to understand a positive sentence".

In contrast, our towards motives are stronger the closer we get to our goals, just like a magnet, and thinking of what we want helps keep us focused on reaching those outcomes.

*Top-tip: Frame all your resolutions as positive futures, rather than as negative pasts. If you don’t want to work here, think clearly and precisely about where you do want to work and use that as your driving force.

Having framed our resolutions as positive futures we can strengthen them by clear visualisation of what they will feel like, look like, be like, even taste and sound like once achieved. This technique is used extensively by international athletes to take themselves to the top of their chosen sport. Kelly Holmes will tell you she won the 400m gold medal in Athens thousands of times before she stepped onto that track. Why? Because the sub-conscious mind cannot tell the difference between a lucid, detailed, vividly imagined event and the real thing, and where the mind leads the body will follow.

However, your visualisations are different from pure fantasy because your positive images of the future are grounded in the here and now. Your desired future is something to be worked towards; your present reality is something that must be changed. The resulting need for you to act causes you to do what’s required. In this way the effect necessary to attain fantasy in reality is achieved.

*Top-tip: reinforce your resolution to change the present by visualising your outcome in vivid detail and your successful completion of each step needed to achieve it.

At this point someone will usually make a call for a spot of realism. Should people be encouraged to adopt goals that they have no hope of attaining? I have two responses.

Firstly, what’s reality? The outside observer may not see the how, or the why of someone’s goal, but that does not make it any less real for the person concerned. What outside observer, blessed by reality, would have predicted Lance Armstrong recovering from cancer to win the Tour de France seven years in a row?

Secondly, hope alone is not a strategy. But, if a person sincerely believes they can attain their goal and they have sufficient motivation, application and dedication, then they have every likelihood of success.

*Top-tip: keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Think for yourself. Letting others do your thinking is like letting them eat your food, leaving you with the bill.

Whether the eventual outcome of your resolution is near-term or long-term your success is more certain if you are clear about how you will get there (your route map), the stages involved (your milestones) and how you are doing along the way (performance feedback). And a little celebration at each achievement, a pause to reflect on the distance travelled to that point and how next to proceed, is as necessary as refuelling yourself and the car on a long motorway journey.

Your regular process of reflection and review helps to keep your outcome in mind. Your destination is like a harbour light towards which you steer, but your precise heading at any point may need to change to cope with shifts in the wind and the weather. When we set out on our voyage of self-discovery we cannot be sure what will arise to blow us off course, or what shifts in the currents might cause us to drift. But we can be almost certain that some hitch or hindrance will present itself. At each twist and turn of the compass you need to R.O.W. – Review where you are; examine what Options you have for the next leg of the process; Work on putting the best one into immediate effect.

*Top-tip: Expect some problems in getting where you’re going. Stay focused, yet flexible and be ready to adapt your plans, rather than your aims, as things crop up. Shift happens, so use it to fuel your resolve.

Many of us struggle when we are making changes to our lives. We seem to be setting a cracking pace, only to be cruelly knocked back, often by own perceived weakness. Does it help, when this happens, if you have told others of your plans?

Sharing your plans is very much a personal choice. The answer will vary from one individual to the next and from one goal to the next. Some coaches believe “giving-up” goals, like dieting, are for sharing while “going-up” goals, like dropping a dress size, are best kept to oneself. I see no difference between these goals, other than how the person wishes to express them.

Putting our goals into words and explaining them to someone else can improve our clarity, identify likely impediments and resolve any inconsistencies. However, that can also be achieved by writing our goals down, breaking them into steps and drafting a plan of action, including target times for when you will get things done. Whatever the goal, you cannot give it away for someone else to achieve. Sharing with others is only going to be of benefit if they are there to offer help and support, rather than doubts and damaging remarks. Failure is a state of mind, not a single lapse.

*Top-tip: making changes to your life is about beating yourself – not beating yourself up, or giving someone else a stick to do it for you.
Making New Resolutions is easy. We have all made hundreds of them. We even make the same ones again this year that we made last year. How easy is that?

Actually realising your New Year’s resolutions might not be so effortless. However, most people fail to recognise opportunity because it often comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

We can all do the easy bit, but you will find that life only begins at the end of your comfort zone. To reach our full potential we must step out of our security blanket knitted from habit and routine.

With the world around us changing at an ever faster rate, is it even possible for us to be immune from personal change unless we wish to be a passenger, left at the airport as our flight to the future takes off from gate 1?

This is just the opportunity we need to break through our self-imposed limits and review our outlook, our attitudes and our behaviours. Each of us has a huge reservoir of unrealised potential within us. We have the chance to learn more, do more and achieve more than any previous generation. We only have ourselves to blame if we allow ourselves to waste those acres of diamonds.

*Top-tip: resolutions are not just for New Year, but for the rest of your life. Achieving them is not a race, because only you can be the winner.

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Many people set out to look for the forest and get lost in the trees. In your dreams coaching gives you the space, time and tools to break out of this self-perpetuating cycle, get a clear picture of what you want and helps you design a suitable route map to your chosen destination.

Your first success has been recognising the need for assistance.

Your second is having the good sense to call for it.

Call Paul Hayward on 01234 831631

"'You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live." ~ Joan Baez