Beyond SMART – To Better New Year Resolutions’

For the past few days there’s been a certain commercial on TV that’s been probing my thoughts a little.

It’s a New Year Greeting snippet. And in this snippet, celebrities were discussing social media being awash with a flurry of New Year Resolution posts and joking about how no one keeps their resolutions.

It’s a New Year Greeting all in the name of fun.

But these got me thinking

  1. 4 days in to 2017 and no one has made any form of New Year Resolutions
  2. Have we all resigned to the fate that Resolutions are doomed to fail?

So, let’s talk about Resolutions.

Because I believe that this is a good habit (and tradition) that we should keep and not just simply diss off like that!

In a great sense, Resolutions are like personal Goal Settings.

And a good Goal needs to have these 5 elements in the SMART Framework:

  1. Specific
  2. Measurable
  3. Agreed Upon
  4. Realistic
  5. Time set

But why are resolutions still so hard to keep?

After practicing NLP for close to 2 years now, I’ve come to realize that there are 3 more essential ingredients in Goal Setting left out in the traditional SMART framework:

  1. You have to feel for your resolution

  2. The result of your resolution has to be worth it

  3. You have to visualize and feel that you can and have already achieved the outcome

1 – Feeling for Your Resolution

“I want to lose 10kg by the end of the year.”
“I want to close $1 million in sales by November.”

Now these sound like very typical resolutions. But you know how else they sound?

Cold, hard and disconnected.

When you don’t feel for your resolutions, you don’t own them.

It’s like saying “LOL” – You aren’t really laughing out loud.

So maybe you might wanna rephrase your resolutions to include some form of genuine feeling.

“I want to lose 10kg by the end of the year and feel healthy and energized doing so!
“I want to close $1 million in sales by November and feel success within me!

The contrary is true – if you can’t feel for your resolution, don’t bother making it.

2 – It Has To Be Worth It

This addresses the “Why” issue.

If the result of the resolution is not strong enough, there’s no real reason you’d want to follow it through the rest of the 360ish days of the year.

If there are other distractions that are more worth it and more important, *cough*food*cough*laziness*cough* then, well, be prepared for your resolutions to break once challenged.

So once again, rephrase your resolutions to include the reason you are setting them in the first place.

“I want to lose 10kg by the end of the year and feel healthy and energized doing so because I want to look smashing!
“I want to close $1 million in sales by November and feel success within me because I want a breakthrough in my career!

Now ask yourself: these results you want – are they worth fighting for?

3 – Visualize And Feel Success

This.

If you set a resolution half joking that you’re not going to follow it through,

Guess what?

You’re not going to follow it through.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Close your eyes. Walk through your daily process working on your resolution and the eventual outcome.

Feel how you’ll feel along the way and enjoy the satisfaction when you’ve achieved it because of how worthwhile it is.

Remember the feeling because this is going to pull you on day by day as the year trudges past.

As Yoda says – Visualisation leads to purpose; purpose leads to reality; reality leads to action; action leads to achievement.

Ok no. Yoda didn’t say that. But it’s much more positive that his original quote.

There you have it. The SMART+++ way to setting your New Year Resolutions.

We’re still in the first week of 2017, so go forth and set yourself some personal goals that are worth pursuing and some

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