8 Strategies To Stay A Bold New Course In 2015
“I don’t do resolutions,” my friend Sandy told me. “I never keep them so what’s the point?” It’s not an uncommon attitude. Nor is it an unreasonable one when you look at the stats: 80% of people break their resolutions by the end of January. While sometimes people make foolish resolutions, the real reason many fail to keep them is simple – they lack the strategies needed to stay the course, wrongly assuming that motivation alone will do the trick.
Not only is motivation tenuous in nature, but our own self-doubt and fear of failure can sabotage our efforts before we ever really get started. To make the changes you really want – whether on January 1st or any day of the year, you have to employ strategies to steel your resolve and rise above the self-doubts, fear and old habits of behavior that strike at the heart of every worthwhile endeavor.
Here are eight proven “success strategies” to stay a bold new course in 2015; to make it your year of living bravely, no matter what.
1. Clarify Your Big Why
Courageous action without a clear purpose can result in catastrophic failure. So before you start out, be crystal clear about why you want to do what you do. Doing so will enable you to be more intentional in creating it, dig deeper when the going gets tough or habitual (fear-fuelled) ways of thinking and acting threaten to pull you back to the status quo and well-worn excuses. As I wrote in Stop Playing Safe, “When you have a big enough Why you can figure out any How.”
2. Confront The Cost
Change, even change for the better, is difficult because it involves risk and exacts a cost on us. If it didn’t exact some toll then everyone would be changing those aspects of their lives – from destructive relationships, jobs they loathe to unhealthy habits – that pull them down and limit their happiness. The reason they don’t is because to change anything we have to forego the pay-off we get from sticking with the status quo: familiarity, comfort, security, short-term gratification. As I wrote in Stop Playing Safe, giving up the payoff you get from sticking with the status quo requires confronting the long term cost of inaction!
Change, even change for the better, is difficult because it involves risk and exacts a cost on us. If it didn’t exact some toll then everyone would be changing those aspects of their lives – from destructive relationships, jobs they loathe to unhealthy habits – that pull them down and limit their happiness. The reason they don’t is because to change anything we have to forego the pay-off we get from sticking with the status quo: familiarity, comfort, security, short-term gratification. As I wrote in Stop Playing Safe, giving up the payoff you get from sticking with the status quo requires confronting the long term cost of inaction!
3. Narrow Your Focus!
Aiming high is great, but deciding you want to run a marathon, finish your MBA, change jobs, renovate your home, and write a book all in the next year can leave you bouncing about like Tigger on Red Bull, not quite sure which direction you are going. Instead, set yourself up for success by focusing on one major goal at a time, not twenty-one. As Daniel Goleman has written in his latest book Focus, distraction is a goal killer and undermines your change efforts at every turn! So too is overwhelm and exhaustion.
Aiming high is great, but deciding you want to run a marathon, finish your MBA, change jobs, renovate your home, and write a book all in the next year can leave you bouncing about like Tigger on Red Bull, not quite sure which direction you are going. Instead, set yourself up for success by focusing on one major goal at a time, not twenty-one. As Daniel Goleman has written in his latest book Focus, distraction is a goal killer and undermines your change efforts at every turn! So too is overwhelm and exhaustion.
4. Enlist Your Support Crew
Never underestimate the power of your social environment to support or sabotage your success. Sir Michael Hargraves, whose new book Mind Hacking will be released in 2015, recommends collaborating with others who want to achieve similar goals. You should also recruit a cheer squad among your family and friends, enlist someone(or several someones) to hold you accountable, hire a trainer, engage a coach, create a Facebook accountability group. Likewise, if there are people or environmental triggers in your life that pull you down or off track, address them directly and set clear boundaries up front. When you surround yourself with people who believe in you, it makes success so much easier to achieve!
Never underestimate the power of your social environment to support or sabotage your success. Sir Michael Hargraves, whose new book Mind Hacking will be released in 2015, recommends collaborating with others who want to achieve similar goals. You should also recruit a cheer squad among your family and friends, enlist someone(or several someones) to hold you accountable, hire a trainer, engage a coach, create a Facebook accountability group. Likewise, if there are people or environmental triggers in your life that pull you down or off track, address them directly and set clear boundaries up front. When you surround yourself with people who believe in you, it makes success so much easier to achieve!
5. Make It Measureable
It’s great to want to eat better, get fitter, be happier, relax more and create better work/life balance but you could add an apple a day to your diet and tick the first box. Set a goal you can track and measure. For instance, if you want to get fitter, aim to run 10k by May 30th, then schedule how many workouts you’ll do each week to build up to it.
It’s great to want to eat better, get fitter, be happier, relax more and create better work/life balance but you could add an apple a day to your diet and tick the first box. Set a goal you can track and measure. For instance, if you want to get fitter, aim to run 10k by May 30th, then schedule how many workouts you’ll do each week to build up to it.
6. Start Small
Every great feat is really just the accumulation of thousands of smaller steps . So however big your goal, first break it down into small short-term goals, and then break those down into smaller, highly ‘doable’ bite-size steps. E.g. Step 1, Print out this article. Step 2, Write down your goal (doing so increases the likelihood of achieving it by 70%). Step 3, Tell your partner and ask them to hold you accountable. Step 4, Schedule time to write down the next 10 steps! If you take one action every day, however insignificant it may seem, a year from now you’ll be in a very different place.
7. Prepare For Setbacks
Success wouldn’t be meaningful if it landed easily in your lap. In fact it’s the roll-up-your-sleeves hard- work that grows your muscles for life. If it were easy to live a big and brave life everyone would be doing it. Assuming everything should fall neatly into place is a surefire recipe for disappointment and frustration. So too is thinking you’ll be as motivated a month from now as you are today. Motivations ebb and flow. So too does luck. What matters most isn’t that everything goes exactly to plan, but that you stay connected to your ‘Big Why’ which will help you stay the course when plans don’t work out, doubt creeps in and motivation wanes. Your disappointments, bad-days, failures and setbacks don’t define you; how you respond to them will.
Success wouldn’t be meaningful if it landed easily in your lap. In fact it’s the roll-up-your-sleeves hard- work that grows your muscles for life. If it were easy to live a big and brave life everyone would be doing it. Assuming everything should fall neatly into place is a surefire recipe for disappointment and frustration. So too is thinking you’ll be as motivated a month from now as you are today. Motivations ebb and flow. So too does luck. What matters most isn’t that everything goes exactly to plan, but that you stay connected to your ‘Big Why’ which will help you stay the course when plans don’t work out, doubt creeps in and motivation wanes. Your disappointments, bad-days, failures and setbacks don’t define you; how you respond to them will.
8. Invest In Your Best
Who are you when you are at your best? Physically strong and energetic with plenty of stamina. Emotionally confident, calm and resilient. Mentally focused and clear on top priorities. Spiritually centred and purposeful. Now ask yourself, what do you have to do for yourself – daily, weekly, regularly – to be that person… to be playing your ‘A Game?’ Whatever it is, schedule time right now into your calendar for doing it! For working out, for planning ahead, decompressing, re-centering, and recharging. You will go further and bounce back faster if you are continually investing in being your ‘best-self.’ It’s not selfish or indulgent… it’s indispensible for living your best life!
Who are you when you are at your best? Physically strong and energetic with plenty of stamina. Emotionally confident, calm and resilient. Mentally focused and clear on top priorities. Spiritually centred and purposeful. Now ask yourself, what do you have to do for yourself – daily, weekly, regularly – to be that person… to be playing your ‘A Game?’ Whatever it is, schedule time right now into your calendar for doing it! For working out, for planning ahead, decompressing, re-centering, and recharging. You will go further and bounce back faster if you are continually investing in being your ‘best-self.’ It’s not selfish or indulgent… it’s indispensible for living your best life!
Truly successful people do things others don’t want to do, or don’t think to do. They are clear about what they want, focused on getting it, prepared to challenge themselves, and they are persistent when plans don’t work out. If you want to MAKE 2015 YOUR YEAR OF LIVING BRAVELY, invest time now to plan ahead so you can start strong, stay brave and live well, no matter what.
Margie Warrell is a leadership coach, media contributor and bestselling author of Stop Playing Safe and Find Your Courage. Her next book Brave will be published by John Wiley April 2015. Sign up for her “Live Bravely!” Newsletter at MargieWarrell.com
http://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2014/12/29/make-2015-your-year-for-bravery-8-strategies-to-stay-a-bold-course/
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