6 Thoughts on Successful Resolutions For a Thriving 2010!

As we prepare to head into the two biggest annual holiday celebration weeks in the U.S. each year, many people are beginning to think about their New Year’s resolutions. Unfortunately, many people will not come at their resolutions with the proper perspective. Thus, their resolutions will become one of their first failures of the year.

The statistics I found on New Year’s resolutions two years ago are:

• As low as 45% and as high as 88% of people set resolutions or goals each year in a handful of surveys done the last five years.
• After 2 weeks, just 70% of these people will continue their efforts to achieve their resolutions or goals
• After 6 months, just 40% to 50% of these people will continue to pursue or have achieved their resolutions or goals
• Only 8% to 12% of these people achieve their resolutions or goals

Before you set your resolutions this year and set yourself up to be part of the 90% that fail to achieve their resolutions, consider these thoughts.

1. Drive to Thrive (in some way, shape, or form)! Connect to something you are truly passionate about and/or have a strong drive to achieve it from the very moment you start to think about it. Pursue selective greatness by deploying your strengths and talents. Build momentum in this area and give yourself the opportunity to focus on what’s working. You can expand this success into other areas as your momentum grows.
2. Re-invent 10% of your disciplines. Jim Rohn often told his students that “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.” Choose to suffer the smaller pain of re-inventing one attitudinal discipline, one thought discipline, and one disciplined action. These can be the smallest of disciplines but they will quickly lead you down a path of success when they are practiced each day.
3. Only participate in the right meetings. Instead of complaining about being in too many meetings, change how you contribute to your meetings and run your meetings for greater success. Eliminate some meetings and re-structure others. Schedule the meetings to occur as frequently as necessary (and no more frequently) to achieve the four kinds of objectives (synchronization, constraint removal, priority advancement, and strategic maneuvering) necessary to achieve long-term, sustainable success. Finally, bring data (not opinions) and facilitate dialogue and debate during the meeting so that you can make the discoveries that support the advancement of your goals.
4. Make better Decisions. Vow to create a better ecosystem around you. One that is supportive of making better and better decisions. Engage in your meetings and relationships in a way that enhances your ability to make daily decisions. Draw out solutions from those around you and debate different views to find better solutions, not to win the debates.
5. Be determined to make your decisions right. Once you have made decisions, be determined to make progress based on those decisions. Far too often, people don’t invest in the process of making the best decision possible. Instead, they hesitantly make decisions and then immediately start looking for excuses or reasons why those decisions will not work. Do the opposite, invest in the decision making process and then be 100% committed to making your decisions right. Know that there will be obstacles and challenges in implementing your decisions. Be determined to find ways around those obstacles and challenges.
6. Continually monitor the data around your resolutions and use it as feedback. Adjust your course, as necessary, to achieve your resolutions.

Acknowledge that resistance is just a natural consequence of having goals and resolutions. Focus on what you want, not the resistance. What you think about and focus on expands. You just need to connect to what you want in the right way to overcome the resistance. Know that you can and you will find the answers as to how you will achieve your goals and resolutions.