This year, what do you say we make a realistic plan for our New Years Resolutions…
The vast majority of New Years Resolutions fail miserably. Have you seen the parking lot at a gym the first week of January? It’s overflowing! Then just 3 weeks later, it’s back to normal. Damn near everyone has quit already. Why did they quit? Are they just lazy, or could they have done something different to ensure their New Years Resolutions were successful this year?
Why do people stop making New Year’s resolutions? Usually, because “they don’t work”. Why don’t they work? Usually it all boils down to a lack of planning or a foundation to build on.
This doesn’t have to be your reality. Simply put, if you want to succeed with your New Year’s resolutions, you have to start preparing way before New Year’s Eve. Don’t just make a wish on January 1st. Instead, you need some preparation time.
The reason that resolutions fail more often than not is that people don’t put in enough effort to allow them to succeed. The things we want to change in our lives are generally the systematic failures. For instance, people often want to get in better shape, stop smoking or drinking, or to get more serious about establishing a career. But even if you want to make a change, it is not easy to make changes in your behavior. We all have habits that get in the way of achieving our ultimate goals. We created an environment that supports our current behaviors and have surrounded ourselves with people who help us stay in our current ways.
First thing we have to do is focus on positive goals rather than negative ones. A positive goal is an action you want to perform; a negative goal is something you want to stop doing. Your habits are memories of actions you perform in a particular situation. You can’t learn not to do something, if you focus yourself only on stopping behaviors, you will never develop new habits.
More of us need to make realistic plans for what we want to change about ourselves. If you want to start going to the gym more often, it is not enough to say that you want to go to the gym 2-3 times a week.
Where is that going to fit on your daily schedule? You need to pick specific days/times and add them to your calendar if you really want to make this goal happen. Unless you get specific, you will have a hard time identifying all of the obstacles that will get in your way. Put the gym on your calendar Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, from 7:30am – 8:30am. That is specific enough to give you a fighting chance of succeeding.We also need to make changes to our environments as well. We tend to do things that are easy. A big key to behavior change is to make desirable behaviors easy and undesirable behaviors hard.
Last, don’t be so hard on yourself! Take it easy, be kind to yourself, and realize making a true, lasting change is no walk in the park. Real behavior change is not easy and the odds are against you, unless you do it right. There are days when you will win and others days that you will fail. On the days you fail, treat them as an opportunity to learn about what to do differently next time rather than as a reason to give up.
While working on a world changing invention, the light bulb, Thomas Edison was asked how he kept going after “failing so many times.” His response?
“I haven’t failed; I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work!”
Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Let it sink in.
We really can Win with our New Year’s resolutions. WE JUST HAVE TO PLAN TO SUCCEED.
*Guest Post written by Danny Young of Academy Mortgage in Salt Lake City, Utah
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Danny Young
About the Author: The above article on How to Make New Year’s Resolutions that Work was written and provided by Danny Young, a top rated loan officer with Academy Mortgage in Mortgages & Home Loans in Salt Lake City, Utah. Danny can be reached via email at [email protected] or by phone at 801-598-0360. Danny has helped many people get the best deal on a mortgage, so they could buy homes in Salt Lake City.
Thinking of selling your home? I have a real passion for buying and selling Real Estate, as well as marketing & smart home technology. I’d love to share my expertise!
I help people get a mortgage to buy and sell real estate in the following Salt Lake area cities & neighborhoods: Holladay, Cottonwood Heights, Millcreek, Olympus Cove, Canyon Rim, Sugarhouse, Midvale, Murray, East Millcreek, Sandy, White City, Draper, Riverton, Daybreak, South Jordan, West Jordan, Herriman, Bluffdale, South Salt Lake, The Avenues, Federal Heights, and of course, Salt Lake City.
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