How many New Year’s resolutions have you made in your life? Are you someone who makes them religiously each year or someone who makes them each month, week or even day? Are you someone who has never made one? More importantly how many of your New Year resolutions have you achieved? How many of them have continued into your life after January, February, May, October? How many of them have lasted a year? How many of them have made a lasting impact on the quality of the life you live today?
With the end of the year just around the corner the topic of New Years resolutions has come up in conversation often of late. Most people I speak to about their new year’s resolutions admit to past failed attempts at New Year resolutions and while it’s fun to share in a laugh at how some of them didn’t even make it beyond January 2nd it is also clear that there is pain beneath the unsuccessful attempts. This fascinates me because I can see that people have great ideas and they have a huge desire to succeed yet often they are not. I wanted to find out why so many New Year’s resolutions fail, I wanted to get to the core of why it is often so difficult for us to make lasting, successful change and more importantly I wanted to come up with a way, a simple formula to make this year’s New Year’s resolution and other changes a guaranteed success for you.
In this post we take a look at each of the 3 components that make up this simple success change formula so that you can apply them to your New Years resolution this year, prove to yourself that change is possible, quick and fun and enjoy a lifetime of successful rather than failed New Year’s resolutions.
- You Must Want to Change
In order to change you truly must want to change. While wanting to change alone does not create change it is still a crucial ingredient.
I am talking about the desire within you to change as opposed to wanting to change because you want to please someone else or because you are told it is the right thing to do or you ‘should’. You, yourself must see the value in the change. If you don’t see the value that will be added to your life through making the change you either aren’t going to make it, if you do you will resent it (or the person who ‘made’ you do it) or you will never truly embrace it the last two of which in my opinion are worse than having not made the change at all because change must eventually feel rewarding and meaningful to you in order for it be worth it.
Identify what it is you want to change exactly and then get very clear on how you want to do/be/feel instead, that is once you have succeeded at making the change. Set a measure that will allow you to know when you have successfully made the change.
The first step is asking yourself the question do I want this change? (and answering honestly). If it’s a yes and you can think of all the ways this change will improve your life move on to step 2 because contrary to popular belief change takes more than the desire to change.
2. You Must Know How to Change
Now you know you want to make a change, you know why and you have a measure that will let you know when you have achieved the change you desire. The next step is knowing how to get what you do want. Do you know the steps, strategies, actions and tools you will need to get from where you are to where you want to be?
They say when your hunger to change is insatiable you will find a way to change no matter what and while I very much agree with this the key thing here is that you still haven’t made the change until you have made the change. No matter how hungrily you are chasing and searching for change, it’s not change until you can measure it within yourself. In short in order to change you must know how to change, you don’t’ have to know this when you start, indeed if you truly did you’d have made the change, but you have to eventually find it otherwise no change happens, you’re just chasing change.
If you are one of the people who makes the same or a similar variation on a New Year’s resolution year after year and makes promises and commitments to yourself and others left, right and centre only to find them all broken not too long later it is not because there is something (anything) wrong with you it is because you have not yet learnt how to make that change you want. Think about this for a moment because while it is simple it is true. Those changes you want, none of them are impossible and the reason you haven’t made them is simply because you haven’t before known how. I don’t mean the theoretical or intellectual how I mean the specific how that works for you, with your unique life circumstances, experiences and history.
Therefore, key ingredient number 2 is more learning how to change rather than knowing how to change because if you truly knew how to change, you’d have done it. Step 2 is where you enlist the help that you need to empower you with the right education, tools, beliefs and strategies to do it!
3. You Must Give Yourself the Chance to Change
Step 3 is the follow through. Step 3 is acting in congruence with what you say you want. Step 3 is giving yourself the opportunity, the space, the permission and the chance to change.
Notice I am not saying give yourself time, I am saying give yourself a chance and a chance is different to time because if you are using the wrong knowledge, strategies or tools no matter how much time you devote to it you will not achieve the results you want. While time is important a chance to change is not synonymous with time to change and it is a common misconception that change takes a lot of time and effort however with the right knowledge, tools and strategies (step 2) change can be very quick and pleasurable.
Giving yourself the chance to change means realising that you will be different when you change, and I mean really recognising this, you will feel differently, and people will respond to you differently, you will have different interactions. In order to change you must give yourself permission, the chance to be different because you cannot change by staying the same. Permission and the chance to change means giving yourself the chance to be something you have never been. This means you can no longer define yourself how you once did (or how others do) because that limits your ability to act in another way i.e. change. If you want this new change to be sustained you must let go of the limitations of your past and rise above your circumstances because only in this way will you gift yourself a real chance at change.
Take Home Message
Now it is in your hands. I challenge to you to apply this 3-step formula not just to this year’s New Year’s resolution but to any changes you want to make in your life because while it is true that you can make any change you want without the belief that you can, the ‘how to’ and the chance to change it will forever remain a possibility or potential and not reality. Let this year be the year you bring that change, that dream into reality.
I know you’ve got the first ingredient, you’ve got the wanting, you’ve got the hunger and the drive, you’ve probably had it a long time, now is the time to seek support and encouragement from those who will help you with the nest 2 steps the ‘how to’ and the chance. Because when all 3 of the above ingredients are congruent change is not just possible it is inevitable.
Change can be easy, change can be fun and the result is something you cannot put a price on; a better life.
Happy New Year.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Feeling courageous and committed? Share your New Years resolution below for accountability!
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie
