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This is the time of the year when most people feel frantic about setting their new year’s resolutions. They are obsessed with what they want to achieve in the new year that they did not achieve in previous years. It is a time for hail Mary passes that sometimes are completed and more often than not are not completed.
People are creatures of habit and the habit of making resolutions is much stronger than the resolve to actually do the work to achieve them. All too often, people think up the big, bold, and bodacious resolutions forgetting that they did not achieve most of them in the previous years.
They think that somehow they have miraculously found the magic in achieving their resolutions and that this will be the year that they lose the extra weight, finish that home improvement project, write that business book, or travel to the exotic ends of the Earth. The harsh truth is that if people try to achieve any of their resolutions with the same habits as in the past years, they are likely to fail yet again.
Failure is an option for many people who come up with these gracious goals. They somehow take themselves off the hook and accept the failure of not achieving their resolutions. The habit of accepting failure becomes stronger than the habit of focused actions towards achieving their resolutions.
The new habits that must be integrated into the Vision for Success Plan for the new year are, create a Vision Board, Work with an Accountability Mentor, and Set Milestones as check-ins.
Creating a vision board is simple, fun, and great for visual learners-most people have a bias towards learning through seeing things. The vision board gives people the opportunity to create in their right brain and organize in their left brain, this integration leads to more successful outcomes.
The simplest way to create a vision board is with photos and words from magazines that are cut and pasted to a poster board. The best way to select the items that will go on the vision board is to act on the first impulse and to not overthink it. Arrange them on the poster board in a way that excites you and keeps your attention span for more than a minute.
Accountability mentors support people in achieving their resolutions, its what that they get paid to do. Working out on their own, people can achieve a certain level of success. Working out with a training coach promotes more successful outcomes. There are countless examples of accountability mentors from all areas of life.
More and more people see the value of working with an accountability mentor and have the results to prove to themselves that their investment in themselves was a wise one. Accountability mentors in leadership and business work with some of the top executives in corporations as well as business owners. Teamwork makes achieving results more structured and methodical.
Milestone check-ins are essential and critical to achieving the successful outcomes associated with any resolution. Only by checking on the progress of the work focused on the resolutions will people know when they are on track.
The Vision for Success Plan is the framework for the resolutions that have been established for the new year. The vision board acts as the reminder and focusing tool while the accountability mentor ensures that actions are taken to achieve the resolution. The milestones are all about keeping track of the journey and ensuring it is on course. All three of these essential components are equally important and must work synergistically to ensure that the resolutions are met by the end of the new year.
Working towards achieving resolutions requires art and science, as well as a creative and organized mind. The Ying and Yang must be present to overcome the habit of failure and replace it with the habit of success.
People’s willingness to resolve to do things differently is what will serve them in exchanging bad habits for supportive habits. This one resolution will support any and all resolutions. Successfully achieving resolutions comes from creating new habits not coming up with new resolutions.
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Photo courtesy iStock.