Resolutions for 2018

Last night, I had a webinar with my friend, author Jon Acuff, talking about how to make resolutions stick for the new year. So I thought I would synthesize what was shared and pass it along to you as you prepare for 2018.

The first thing shared is that for all resolutions made, 92% will fail. Not great odds, right? Well, there’s hope. The thing that we Americans tend to do is make our goals way too big, and unreachable. Instead of breaking the cookie down into bite sized pieces, we tend to try to shove the entire cookie into our mouth, choke on the cookie, and stop trying.

So how do you break down the cookie into bite sized pieces? As I posted yesterday about starting to go through and get rid of things, if you want to end up with the whole house being your macro goal, your micro, or bite sized goal is that each month, you focus in on one area. You’re building on those wins and rolling them up together.

The next thing Jon shared is that when we set goals to take on something, we don’t always give up something. We think that adding in one, two, three or more things to our busy lives is going to be easy, and that we expect it to be perfect or we quit. We don’t give ourselves grace. When you take on a new goal, you want to create steps to success, but also eliminate as best as you can the distractions that may keep you from achieving the goal.

Finally, one thing that we don’t always think of is how to make it fun. Give yourself the motivation you need. Figure out what it is that you want as your goal, find a reward and make it happen!

So if you’re going to start running in 2018, awesome. Don’t sign up for a marathon. Start with a simple, more achievable goal of a 1K. Do you have 100 pounds to lose? Set yourself a goal of losing 8 pounds in January. You don’t have to do it all in the first 31 days of 2018. When you break that macro goal down into micro goals and then even smaller from there. For example, if you’re wanting to lose 100 pounds, you’ve got the 1st on a Monday. So, by the 8th, you want to be down 2 pounds, the 15th, down 2 more pounds, the 22nd, down 2 more and finally on the 29th, you should be down 2 more and you’ve hit your 8 pound goal. If you’re looking at losing 100 pounds and you “only” get down 8 by the end of January, you may feel frustrated, lose focus and quit. Then you’lll join the 92% who will fail.

Let’s be the 8% this year. Let’s make improvements in many different facets of our lives. We can do it together and encourage each other! I’ve got The Minimalist Musician Facebook group if you’d like to join for more encouragement.