| Do you
sit down at the beginning of the year and make a list of things
you want to achieve or change about yourself and your life? Do you
perhaps call these New Year’s Resolutions? It’s now
six months later - and what’s happened to those resolutions?
For 87% of people, not much. If the
resolution was about a change in behaviour or addition change then
it may have lasted into late February. For 10% of people the resolution
may have got this far in a watered down form or perhaps has just
been forgotten. 3% are still in there and are reaping the rewards.
What does it all mean?
A New Year’s Resolution is
nothing more that a New Year’s Confession (“I confess
I’ve got to lose weight”, “I confess I’ve
got to stop smoking” etc). Now confessions are great as a
first step towards setting goals but on their own they are useless
and will never be achieved. The 10% who did fairly well turned them
into goals (“I will lose two stone by April”, “I
will cut down and the stop smoking by Easter”) so at least
there was something to aim for - a goal.
We all know about goals, we all understand
them. If they forget to put the goals on the football pitch at the
new Wembley stadium what will the score be on the all the games
played there? Nil-nil. We get the concept of goals so what goes
wrong? What’s going on?
It’s because there are rules
to setting goals. The first one is very simple, it’s what
3% of us did this year and that was to write the goal down. Simply
doing that dramatically increases the likelihood of the goal being
successful. But it needs to be written down in the right way, in
the present tense and positive (“I weigh ten stone”,
“I am a non-smoker”) as that is the only way to programme
the subconscious. (An even better way would be “I am delighted
with my consistent weight of ten stone”, “I live a vibrant,
healthy life everyday”.)
The other thing you need to do to
achieve your goals is to passionately believe you need the outcome.
This is because your subconscious mind just won’t bother helping
you to finding a way of getting it if it’s not that important.
It’ll be concentrating on making sure you’re stocked
up with chocolate and cigarettes as it’s going to be still
convinced that’s what you need. You have to be busting for
them for your subconscious to throw out the old rules and motivate
you to get them.
If you needed to visit the toilet
in the middle of the night, your subconscious will (hopefully) wake
you up before something unpleasant happens. If you need a salary
of £50k a year, and convince yourself that’s what you
need, your subconscious will wake you up to do something about it
and a way will be found. Have you ever tapped your head on the pillow
six times before going to sleep to programme yourself to wake up
at 6am without an alarm clock? If not, try it.
This is programming the subconscious
to act as your own personal coach, egging you on, finding ways to
overcome problems to reach your real goals. Without it, you’ll
always fall at the very first hurdle.
If we don’t plant what we want
in the garden of life – it’s soon going to be overrun
with weeds. Or put another way - if you don’t set goals you’re
at the mercy of someone who does.
Plan to succeed. Prepare to succeed.
Expect to succeed. Demand to succeed. And most important of all
do it NOW! Don’t wait until 1st January to see how far behind
you are! Goals are for life, not just for Christmas. |
