How to Strategize your New You with Better Habits
6 Habits to stop sabotaging our resolutions
It has been said that we (people, humans) like to stand in the way of success. For most of us, a new year, a new job, a new relationship, and even a new car mean a new chapter, a new chance to do things differently. However, if nothing changes is not because we failed at our resolutions but because the process of ‘getting things done’ revealed our character.
Resolutions likely fail because if we fail at one task, that single failure will make us lose hope in the whole process. That single step will bring us back onto the hamster wheel feeling frustrated and down on ourselves. Another reason that resolutions often flop is that they are not reinforced by positive principled accountability. As defined by the New York Times bestselling book The Oz Principle, accountability is the “personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results.”
When a person proactively takes accountability for delivering the results they want to see, they are better positioned to meet short-term goals and leverage creative problem-solving to accomplish those goals.
But what does failure, character, and resilience have in common? It’s all about habits.
Habit #1 — Have actionable plans in place. If you can visualize the outcome of a specific change you want to happen in your life, you need to ask yourself how you will accomplish that specific goal you have set out for yourself.
If your new year resolves to lose weight, get in shape, and have more energy >> saying ‘I’m going to go to the gym and eat healthier’ is not a plan… it’s daydreaming. It would help if you surrounded yourself by books, people, moments, and places that make you feel that wellness vibe and live it. In other words, you plan to familiarize yourself with different diet options, ask around to health professionals, or read books. Once you decide on a diet option, you need to create a budget, go and shop for your food and learn about flavors. All this brings is a path of wellness into your life and not just a short term fix that will surely fail.
The same process applies If you resolve to make more money doing what you love versus what pays the bills. Have a plan and invest yourself, whether by putting the time into learning something or networking. Without a plan, you will not have the desired outcome. A boat captain who doesn’t chart coordinates ends up on the island called ‘I hate my life.’
Habit #2 — Forget the ‘how.’ How many times have you said, ‘If I just knew how to do it…then I would have XYZ problem solved’. Having this mindset will prevent you from taking action. It creates the kind of paralysis that will likely make you quit in an instant. This attitude is a major time and energy waster. Your solution is to think creatively of the myriad of ways to get at your objective, and if they don’t work, you surely learned something in the process, be open to more options and keep learning.
For instance, you want to change careers, and the only path you see is going back to school, learn another skill or a language. Many employers will support such learning while on the job; you may take advantage of that or just quit and start school, or take some time off and figure out options but don’t compartmentalize your future depends on just one way or one how of doing things.
If the keto diet you were introduced to didn’t work, you learned great and clean habits, but you also found out it was not the best for your body. However, now you learned a new perspective, you are equipped with delish recipes, and now you can easily transition into paleo or pescatarian, etc.
Habit #3 — Do not postpone. Does this sound familiar?
I’ll start on Monday
I’ll start next week
I’ll start after new year’s
These are all part of the usual, comforting self-talk that makes us switch time zones to a future, imaginative date. We end up avoiding the responsibilities in front of us and turn a greater sense of failure.
Habit #4 — Be willing to change. It will be uncomfortable because to have the life that’s been beyond your reach; you’ll have to stretch to get it. You will learn to do things that you haven’t done before, and your mind should be ready for that too. For you to have the life that’s been elusive to you, the life you know you were built for, the life that lives up to your soul standard, the life where you rise to your potential. Just remember your attitude creates your success.
Habit #5 — Surround yourself with people that have what you don’t. If you want a different career or a better career, better relationships, and a better perspective on wellness, hang with or get coached by those that have it.
Goethe famously said(about 170 years ago), “Tell me with whom you consort with, and I will tell you who you are.” And before him, Seneca wrote to a friend:
Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make crooked straight.
If you can, find or hire a mentor. The mentor's value is that she or he has already figured out how to win this game called ‘I love my life.’ The mentor is someone who is not just telling you what to do but actually living it.
A mentor:
Can catalyze to wake up what’s been dormant inside of you.
It can help you face your fears and turn them into action that produces results.
I can help you come up with a plan.
It can help you end the paralysis of the how and reconnect you to your why.
Can call bullshit on your limiting beliefs, stories, and lies.
I can hold you accountable.
It can help you compress time and stop wasting money.
Habit #6 — Be open to being held accountable. FYI, your friends and family are not going to hold you accountable. They may offer sage advice, but the gap between knowing what you need to do and actually doing it is wide. We all eventually learn the difference between a life fully lived or fully wasted.
One last tip, don’t waste time. Value time as your most precious commodity. Benjamin Franklin once said, “lost time is never found.” Meaning, stop procrastinating and waiting for your life to change magically. It won’t until you make different decisions and take different actions.
