Every year, over half of the U.S. population set New Year’s goals. Out of those millions of people, only about 8% actually succeed in hitting their goals. The rest either have a faulty goal setting system or weren’t really serious about accomplishing them in the first place.
So rather than waste time on a New Year’s resolution that you will have long abandoned by February 1st, maybe it’s time for a better strategy.
Back in 2015, here were the top 3 New Year’s resolutions:
- Lose Weight
- Get Organized
- Spend Less, Save More
All of these are great goals on paper. They each have something unique that can improve that person’s life. There is nothing wrong with setting goals to improve your life.
The challenge is that most of these goals never get accomplished. It’s quite sad because most people have great intentions when setting their New Year’s resolutions.
You’ve been there: you set a resolution that you are really fired up about…for a couple weeks. Life gets in the way and before you know it, July comes and you laugh off the thought of setting that goal in the first place.
According to Timothy Pychyl, professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada, the biggest issues with New Year’s resolutions are that they are a form of “cultural procrastination”. We wait to transform our lives only when the motivation of the New Year comes.
The problem is that we aren’t actually ready to make the necessary changes in our lives. We don’t develop the right habits (or stop the bad ones) and therefore quickly burn out.
Just like those weekly fad diets: people are great two weeks in, but burn out by week 3.
It doesn’t matter how smart your goals are, it matters how intentional you are about changing your behavior.
So in this new year, don’t set your typical New Year’s resolution. Decide to set a “being goal” to become the person that will hit that goal.
Let me explain what I mean:
Let’s take those top goals from before. Now, what if we changed those goals into who that person would need to become in order to hit that goal?
Here are those resolutions – revamped:
- Lose Weight – Become a health nut
- Get Organized – Become a detail queen
- Spend Less, Save More – Become a frugillionaire
Just a simple re-wording massively changes the context of the goal and puts the focus back on the individual’s growth rather than external factors that can sometimes be out of our control. Now you are designing who you want to be rather than what you want to do.
The only way to become something different is to change what you do on a daily basis. True transformation begins in our daily routine. Yet, so many people continue to set lofty doing goals at the beginning of the year and fail to change their daily actions.
You see, it’s rarely about what you need to do, but rather who you need to become.
Transformations don’t happen overnight. They take an inner change before an outer change can occur. This is why setting “being goals” rather than “doing goals” increases your chances of achieving your New Year’s resolutions. Decide who you are going to become next year and you will achieve your doing goals along the way.
So while you set goals for the new year, rather than just think about the outcomes, think about how you are going to get there and how you are going to become that person that kicks ass in 2017…
