#27 New Year's Resolutions Don't Work (1/2/2023)
Do you know why you will fail your New Year’s Resolutions? It’s because you waited till the end of the year. You waited for it to be convenient. You waited for the significance to say you started at the beginning. You waited till everyone else was doing it. You waited the whole year to take a good look at yourself and where you are in life.
If your resolution meant something to you, you would have started the second you realized you needed to take action. You wouldn't have waited. You should have had it written down where you could remind yourself often. You should have gone into every day thinking about what action you can do to get one step closer.
When it comes February/March and further throughout the year, many of these people who made New Year's resolutions won't even be talking about them anymore. Many of them will be living exactly the way they have been for the past few years and most of them will have the same or similar resolution next year because they haven't changed. Are you going to follow the crowd and be a sheep too? Are you going to repeat the cycle of saying “this is going to be my year” or “this is the year I ___” and never actually get there because you only do the work when you feel motivated and everyone in your environment has the same motivation. Of course you are motivated right now; everyone is motivated right now.
If you waited till the end of the year to look in the mirror and realize, "oh snap, I don't like where I am in life", what's going to stop you from waiting till the end of this year to check and see if you changed. If you are not consistently taking action and reflecting on the direction of your life, that's just like spinning in circles and aiming at a target blindfolded (your goals being the target). If your life's resolutions aren't valuable enough for you to at least keep track of daily, then they won't be valuable enough for you to stick to when it's hard.
So, if you want to make a resolution or change in your life and accomplish your goals, you need to:
-Take the first step now, because you will wait a lifetime if you wait for the perfect time to start. There is no perfect time.
-Write down your goals and keep them where you can look back often. Visualizing and obsessing over your goals makes them more real and helps you problem solve when things come up.
-Look at everyday as an opportunity to take a step towards your goals. I write down 5 things I can do each day to set me up for a better tomorrow, and at least one of those things gets me towards a specific goal. And most of the time all those things are related to my goals.
-Do the work. There is no way around getting to where you want to go without taking steps in the right direction. You must build skills and discipline by taking daily action. I start the day off with getting my first task done ASAP to give myself an early boost in momentum that I focus on maintaining throughout the day.
-Check in and review your progress often. Don't wait till the end of the year, month, or even week to see if you are moving in the right direction. When you can narrow down and pinpoint your inconsistency to a single day and correct it, you are more likely to hit your target that's weeks or months out in the future.
-Remember why. The reason you have these goals or want to change is because you want to be aligned with who you are in your fullest potential and what you value. This is your purpose. When times are tough, remember your purpose as you build discipline, because discipline will be there when motivation is not.
I wrote this in the way I speak to myself because I know that for me and many other, we are our own biggest critics. But the reason I wrote this isn't to criticize people. I wrote this because I really want people to succeed, live to their fullest potential, and achieve their biggest dreams. I hope you get a ton of value from this. There are some of the things I hold close as true and have been the most impactful on my life.
-Nick Leehy