How are your New Year resolutions going? Still on track or have your good intentions been derailed? Does this happen to you every year at around this time? We’ll don’t be too hard on yourself as it’s probably not your fault…….its your responsibility but probably not your fault. What do I mean by that? Feel free to read on and find out.
When we are told something is our fault our little six year old self jumps up and down and try’s to defend the actions we have taken, as fault implies blame, like we did something “wrong” deliberately. A much cleaner word for me is responsibility, as this implies ownership. We have a responsibility to learn and understand what we need to know or what behaviours we need to do to succeed.
How is this connected to New Year resolutions? Well, if you repeat patterns of behaviour that don’t work for you, you need to check in with yourself on what you are meant to learn and what changes you need to make to succeed.
A fundamental behaviour with New Year resolutions is, people don’t see them as goals so don’t really commit. They are more like “things i’d like to be better in my World” thoughts. This means that because they haven’t achieved their goals so many times before, they don’t really expect to succeed so they give up at the first challenge.
One phenomena i’ve noticed this year is the “professional goal achievers” as I call them, actually calling out the people making the New Year resolutions. It would be better if they helped and support people make the changes needed. Comments like “Lets see if they are still on track by February 1st”, and oh look its the start of a New Year and here come the resolutions! Surely some support would be better? Vive la resolutions I say!
I work with many clients helping them achieve the changes they’d like to make in their World and become more consistent goal achievers. A common problem is they believe that setting goals using the SMART method is the only way to set goals. This isn’t the case. SMART has it’s uses but one size very rarely fits all. More about that next time.
If you enjoyed this blog and would like to know how to get the most from your goal setting then please drop me a line and lets talk.
To your continued success
Dave Verburg
Asentiv