Ditch the Resolutions: How to Create Real Change in the Year Ahead
Has there ever been a new year’s resolution that you stuck with all throughout the year? A resolution that you made that is still impacting your life today? For most of us, the answer is NO. New year’s resolutions typically don’t last—but know that it is not your fault!
A new year’s resolution of considering what you want to shed from the past year and what you want to grow into throughout the new year is a healthy exercise to do. Unfortunately, these resolutions are usually implemented by the “fantasy and dream” approach. This approach is usually done by thinking of things you would like to do and then just waiting for them to happen. This “fantasy and dream” approach does not address the harsh reality that our internal resistance and challenges to change will still be there. Without any direction or plan on how to make the resolution happen, there will never be any action. Without action, there can be no progress and without progress you ultimately end up feeling like a failure.
This is where creating a vision for your year can offer you the opportunity to connect with the positive feelings elicited by believing in your ability to change while tapping into the specific goals and action steps that will help you create and deliver the change you desire.
Believe in yourself: You have the capability to grow, change and evolve.
Creating a clear vision allows you to connect with what you want—and super importantly—to believe in the possibility that what you want is attainable. When you have a vision for your life, you can create movement, direction and ACTION towards creating and living a life that you love.
To begin, you will need to spend time reflecting, writing, drawing or collaging your vision. Visioning is a fun, creative process and increases right brain activity. The right side of the brain is where your creative, imaginative and dreamy energy flows. Once you create your vision you can begin to extract out the specific goals. Goal setting activates the left brain, which is the logical, reasoning and evaluating side of the brain. Visioning and goal setting allow the right and left side of the brain to work together.
It is ideal to start with one or two goals so as not to feel overwhelmed. Prioritizing is extremely important. Once you have selected which goal to focus on first, it is important to make your goal is measurable, doable, and desirable. A measurable goal is one where you can gauge your progress consistently. The goal also needs to be doable, if it won’t realistically fit into your life you will most likely not follow through. And lastly, it needs to be desirable, you have to WANT it. This is connecting to and knowing deeply within your WHY behind the goal. You can read more about that here!
The next phase is creating action steps, which are the actions you will commit to taking daily that move you in the direction of achieving your goal. You will want to have five action steps that create movement and direction and are just that: actionable. Without action there is no movement forward, and this is where the good ole new year’s resolutions often let us down.
Once you have your action steps, there is one final step. You have to have a PLAN! Without a plan, no progress will be made and your vision will continue to be a thought or desire swimming around in your head. When you create a plan and place your intentions into your mindset to take action you offer the ability to act, grow and change. This creates progress and progress feels so good. It is inherently rewarding!
To start your plan, take the time to write down your action steps in your planner or create a list of when you will complete your action steps. This will allow your action steps to transform over time into a new healthy habit. Once you’ve created a new habit, you will find that you no longer have to force yourself to take action, actions will simply become engrained into your routines. Once you feel that this goal has been met and you no longer feel any resistance to taking action, you can move on to your next goal and approach it in exactly the same manner.