Why Resolutions are just so hard to keep

Why Resolutions Are Just So Hard to Keep You Ask?? 

Well just about all of them. Why? Well we've been taught to believe that it will only take us 21 days to make those new routines a habit. But it takes about three times that. According to research it takes 66 days to get into a habit of a new routine without having to think about it. That's well into March.

Every January we see this influx of folks signing up and heading to the gym. As a certified personal training it's a boom... for about a month. People in our society want fast results. We want dinner in a hurry. We want to lose 10 pounds tomorrow. We want to look ten years younger overnight. We want to be rich yesterday.

When we find out that health and wealth actually take a little work, we get frustrated and walk away. In fact 88% of you "new year's resolution" folks are going to walk away by February. And that's out of the 45% that made a resolution in the first place.

So how can you reach your goals and keep your resolution? 

I think that last year I read an article that actually covered this and I truly believe it from my practice as a life coach. So here are those tips.

1. Keep Your Energy Up: When you are feeling low energy you will make excuses. You really are just tired often times when you say you don't have the time. Make sure you are getting enough sleep, good nutrition and exercise to keep aligned to those items you want in life.

2. Make the Right Goal: Don't say you want to lose 10 pounds if it's not a good fit resolution for you. If you don't hit that goal you'll be depressed and walk away. Say "I'm going to lose 2% of my body weight this month" or "I am going to drop a dress size this year"... make it something you can strive to attain. And align your goals to your priorities and your purpose. It's like the network marketing business. Those that get into it to "get rich" are either scummy and prey on people's desperation, or walk away when they have no passion for the product. Go for the things you love, you cherish and will enhance your life experience. Go for the things that make your family better, and give you joy.

3. Be S.M.A.R.T: You've heard me no doubt talk about setting specific goals if you've known me long enough. Goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. I've been connected with what Vanderbilt Children's Hospital has been up to because of the essential oils and so here is a boring great video that you can watch to cover SMART goal setting.

I love how one programmer used the concept of Agile Programming with SMART goal planning he said:

S for specific: during each sprint planning, the team agrees on a specific set of tasks to achieve, and commits to doing them. The tasks (and the user stories), answer the questions of what do I want to accomplish, purposes/benefits of accomplishing the goal, who is involved, where it takes place, and constraints.

M for measurable: the list of these tasks, plus the movement of the tickets throughout the sprint, from development to code review to QA to release (or whatever your flow is), answers the questions of how much work and when will it be accomplished.

A for attainable: functioning Agile groups don't typically commit to something in the planning stage unless it is clearly attainable -- all the pieces are there to know how to accomplish it

R for relevant: questions like is it worthwhile, is it the right time, does it match our other efforts -- stories and tasks don't get pulled into a sprint, and committed to, unless the answer is yes to all these questions (typically...YMMV)

T for time-bound: a sprint is necessarily time-bound, be it 2 weeks, 3 weeks, more, or less.

4. Make A Plan: If you take this to your own resolutions what you can see is that you need to break it into chunks that are able to get done in 2 - 3 weeks. Make this plan, but be prepared to fail. That's part of Agile. You learn from it. Daily check in with what you've done, what was successful and what you are going to do next as you go through these action steps. My husband has pushed me into Agile over years of me trying to get away from it... but really it's a big part of what I think helps you be successful. Chalene Johnson says you should reverse engineer your goals, and I believe in that. Reverse engineer what you are going for, and then use that as your agile guide.

I believe if you look at this in the new light of longer term, smaller, realistic goals you will tip that 88% scale and we'll start seeing a lot more people reaching those resolution (intention) goals instead of feeling frustrated and failing.