Forget New Year’s Resolutions!

Say what? Why?

Making resolutions at the beginning of a new year is a centuries’ old ritual that creates more disappointment and sense of failure than positive results. The reason is that too often resolutions are simply unrealistic promises about what changes you’d like to see, or feel you should or have to make. As such, they tend to lack the commitment, motivation, and structure that can make them successful.

Yet there are those who do the same thing over and over, get the same crummy results, but still expect to get different results the next time they do it. They need to wake up and smell hard reality. Edison would never have created the light bulb filament if he kept testing candle wicks ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Studies done by Dr. John Norcross at University of Scranton showed that only 50 percent of those who made New Year's resolutions kept them for three months.

Rather than resolutions, the confident self-promoter and others should think realistically about what changes they’d like to make. Change is often difficult to achieve because it involves risk and moving out of your comfort zone. While you may not like where you are, you know what to expect and have adapted to your situation in a fashion.

Change represents the unknown, uncertainty, stress, lots of effort, and some pain. For many “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” So those New Year's promises end up being wishful thinking with little chance of achieving your desired goal.

Instead of making abstract promises, you need to give yourself a break this year and decide what you really want to do. You need to make it as concrete and specific as possible and express it in behavioral terms. Saying you want to “make a lot of money this year” is an unachievable goal. What’s “a lot”? How do you know when you’ve achieved it?

Instead, you need to go for a specific amount but that amount has to be realistic. If you’re making $35,000 a year, it’s probably not very realistic to say you’re going to make $1 million this year. But you might be able to make $60,000 depending upon your p-l-a-n.

Oops! I said the “p” word. Whatever your goal for this new year is it has to have a plan behind it, directing your action. That plan isn’t just breaking the task down into digestible bits and delineating what steps you need to accomplish it. It is also finding ways to tailor the plan to your personality, values, attitudes, habits, and lifestyle. You want to make it as enjoyable and satisfying as possible so it doesn’t feel like hard, slogging work that you'll want to avoid.

For example, deciding that you want to make your additional $25K through speaking engagements may conflict with your discomfort with flying or the amount of time you need to care for an elderly parent on an ongoing basis. But, then again, if speaking is what you really want to do, you may use this as an opportunity to explore other ways of handling those particular life obstacles to give you more flexibility – like taking speaking engagements only within driving distance or finding other assistance for your parent when you can’t be there.

Once you decide what your concrete, specific, measurable, and achievable goal is, you have to figure out exactly how you’re going to achieve it. To make an additional $25K a confident self-promoter could do teleseminars and sell the transcripts and MP3s. You could coach, consult, or speak. You could create e-books, CDs, or home study courses. You could become an affiliate to programs you like.

Whatever you choose singly or in combination, you want to have a sense that it can make the amount you’re seeking, that you’d enjoy doing it, and that it fits with your schedule and life.

You also should be sure to make a public commitment to follow through with your plan. Sharing with others, and even getting constructive feedback from them on it, helps reinforce your motivation to stick with your plan. When making changes, you will tend to have periods of uncertainty and feeling alone. Having a support network can bolster your resolve, help you reward yourself for your progress, and keep you on track.

Furthermore, it's important that you don’t make your plan a matter of "success" or "failure" - life or death. Making $60K as a goal isn’t etched in stone. You may discover as you achieve each successive step in your plan that $50K is more realistic based upon what you’re doing. Or you may choose to alter the way you make the additional $25K or the time period in which you’re doing it.

Resolutions, promises, and wishful thinking can, potentially, lead to your making plans to achieve a goal, but far too often don’t. If you’re really serious about getting what you want – what you really want, then kiss New Year’s Resolutions good-bye.