How to Meet Goals
Avoid New Year's Resolutions at all costs! They most often end up broken. We end up frustrated, disappointed, or defeated. Avoid the resolution. Replace it with a plan that you can use when the boat of life gets rocking, when you can't get off the dot, or when the project feels too big and wound tight like a ball of twine with no beginning and no end.
Here's my idea: Do The Next Right Thing! (Type that into any search engine!.)
To accomplish anything, you need 3 things. The first is motivation, and we lose that pretty quickly. If we didn't, then you would not be reading this right now, hoping for some solution. So stay motivated by being Timely - set a time to accomplish your goal within the boundary of your true motivation. In this way, you remain excited, interested, hopeful; all things one needs to accomplish goals throughout the year.
Let's add a second component to help meet our goal. After all, isn't that what a resolution is - a commitment to meeting a new goal? The second component then is Attainability. Certainly I can't lose 20 pounds this week, and I will more than likely lose my motivation in even a few days, never mind the weeks it could take to lose 20 pounds. So, let me simply set an Attainable goal. I know I can lose a pound. Then that's my Next Right Goal, a pound.
Seems tiny, does it not? That's the great part. By setting a time during which I remain motivated, then I can be certain - or nearly certain that I can meet my Timely and Attainable goal. What might still stand in my way?
I might not make my goal Specific enough. What if I set out to clean the house and am interrupted after just a room or two? If I don't complete my task, then I lose, and like a resolution, I fail. Not such a great outcome. I need to ensure my task then is not only Timely and Attainable, but also Specific enough to ensure I accomplish it. What might seem so small that it is not worth setting such a goal at all becomes the key to the success of getting it done - and getting it done every time!
So I set a goal to accomplish in a day or so, while I am still motivated, I make sure I can accomplish the goal, making it attainable, then I make it just a single pound, or one room to clean, or just to greet someone with a smile - just one person - with a smile tomorrow morning.
Get it? Timely, Attainable, and Specific goals turn into successes. Anything else risks failure. This method works, because it breaks every resolution into a 3 part goal that feeds itself to itself - it makes Doing the Next Right Thing not only possible, but very, very likely.
And if you still want to lose more pounds, just put ditto marks under the first goal and repeat it. If you find yourself cleaning the whole house, then you have exceeded your goal; nothing wrong with that! You have seen the goal -and done it! Now set more, write them down, make each one Timely, Attainable, and Specific. Now there's a resolution!
Break big goals down into tiny ones. Do The Next Right Thing - and repeat it. Avoid telling yourself you are going back to school. Instead make a Next Right goal. Tell yourself you are going to call your local college admin office by tomorrow noon. That is a Timely, Attainable, and Specific plan that would be hard to miss.
Use this plan, then, to help yourself succeed. Share it with other misguided New Year's Resolutioners. Take the best road to success, and make it yours. After all what you gain (or lose) is up to you. We certainly don't need an entire book to figure that out - do we?
