Progressing on Your Goals?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

With March coming to a close, it’s time to check in on your progress. Did you make new year resolutions for 2013?

Look back at last year’s resolutions…did you achieve them all? Did you achieve any of them? If you did, CONGRATULATIONS, you are in the minority.

If you are one of the many people who repeat the same resolutions year after year and seem to get no nearer to achieving them, don’t you think it’s time to review your approach? Following are some tips to increase your chance of success:

Decide what you are TRULY committed to achieve. Half-hearted intentions are bound to fail as you will be easily distracted and diverted onto something else. Are you doing this for yourself or to meet someone else’s expectations? You need to be sure that this is something YOU want to do.

Set specific goals rather than vague resolutions. The more you drill down into the detail, the clearer you become about what is involved in achieving your goal. You can then develop a clear action plan to get you there. Let’s say that you want to lose 20 pounds by July 1. That will probably involve a combination of exercise and healthy eating. Plan out your exercise plan for each month and what you intend to change in your diet. You might also plan in some research time into what is the most effective form of exercise for you, and what foods to include and what to avoid. The clearer you become, the more likely you are to achieve success.

Do not try to achieve too many goals at once. Each goal probably involves a change in what you do or how you do it. That is like breaking one habit and developing another. Our brains are made up of neural networks (connections) that are formed by our thoughts and actions. The more you repeat the thoughts and actions, the stronger the neural networks become and your habit is formed. When you want to change something in your life, you will be creating new neural networks, but you also have to break the old habit which literally involves breaking the old neural network. Long established habits will have made thick neural networks that can take up to a year to disintegrate, which is why people often revert to old habits. It was easy to write a long list of New Year resolutions; however, trying to reprogram your brain to develop too many new neural networks at once is setting yourself a very hard target.

Be honest with yourself about why you might have failed in the past. If you have ever completed the Myers Briggs personality test, you should have learned more about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. Do you try and take on too much?  Do you set unrealistic expectations for yourself?  Do you lack self-discipline?  Are you easily distracted by new ideas and projects? Awareness is half the battle. Once you understand how you behave naturally, you are conscious of the areas you need to improve and you can take action to address them.

Do your best. That does not mean you have to be perfect. If you found that you have  strayed from your plan, acknowledge it, accept it and get yourself back on track. Beware of self-doubt creeping in and that inner voice saying you cannot do it. YOU CAN!

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. One of the major factors in being successful is persistence–not giving up on something that is worth doing. You may have to review your approach and perhaps consider approaching your goal in a different way. Even when you feel as if you are not getting anywhere, a breakthrough will happen if you continue to focus on your goal and BELIEVE you can do it.

Make yourself accountable to someone. We are so much better at achieving things when we make a commitment to someone else. It is much easier to let yourself down than to let someone else down, isn’t it? When we have to account to someone for our actions we are much more likely to carry them out. This is why the most successful people have coaches, mentors and personal trainers–to keep them motivated and on track to meet their goals.