Everyone has a new year's resolution. Some people might want to lose weight, some might want a promotion, but the most popular one has got to be "new year, new me." But how about this for a new year's resolution- Stop making false promises to yourself and MAKE IT HAPPEN. I'm going to share some tips and lifestyle changes to help you actually follow through with your resolution this year.
Approach your personal goals with the same organization and initiative as you give to your 9-5 job.
When you are at work and have a deadline to meet, or a sales quota to hit, what steps do you take to make it happen? For example, in my professional job right now, I am trying to plan ways to drive an extra 100k or more in revenue for my company. The first thing I do, is create a list of strategies and tasks that I can do to start climbing towards that goal. Next, I go through that list and narrow down my best ideas and set timelines for them.
If I am this organized and driven at work, while I am working to help achieve someone else's dream, I should attack my own dreams with the same amount of dedication-If not more! Think of ways that you can apply the experience and knowledge you have from your professional career to make your personal goals come true.
Think of your goal, and pick up a NEW hobby that will help you accomplish that goal.
Hobbies aren't only for leisure, they can be for advancing your goals too, and the best hobbies WILL!
Maybe your new year's resolution is to start building wealth. A hobby you could pick up could be reading. Start by researching the most popular book on saving money. Read it. Maybe something that book talked about sparked your interest in investing. So maybe your next book you read will be about investing. By choosing this hobby, you are taking steps to reaching your goal of building wealth by building your education on HOW to build wealth.
For another example, one of my goals this year is to grow in my Marketing/PR career. So I have picked up photography as a new hobby. I've bought new "toys" like backdrops, lenses, and software to help me learn how to combine what I know about marketing and PR, with what I am learning about photography. My goal with this hobby is that by the end of the year, I might be able to combine all 3 of these skills with graphic design- so that I can produce all the signage (including photos that I have taken myself, to enhance authenticity) and digital aspects for my campaigns... to save my company money by not having to outsource a graphic designer to do this all for us, thus growing that top line revenue even more!
Catch me on the cover of Forbes in 10 years, don't @ me.
Catch me on the cover of Forbes in 10 years, don't @ me.
Track Your Progress.
It's easy to get down and upset about how much further you have to go to reach your goal. That is why it's so important to track your progress- so that instead of focusing on how much further you have to go, you can celebrate how far you have already come and let that motivate you to press on.
If your goal is to lose weight, take a before picture. 4 weeks later, take another one and analyze the positive changes you see. If you see that you've made progress, let that motivate you to continue and push harder to get those end results you are looking for. But what if you don't see a change in that 4 week picture, or worse, you have even gained weight since then? DON'T QUIT. Every body is different.
Just because you're best friend lost 15 pounds on a workout program she bought, doesn't mean that you will have the same success if you do the exact same thing. You cannot let setbacks get you down. If something isn't working, try something else! Eventually, you will learn what types of foods or workouts YOUR body responds to best and you will hit your goals. But, you will not be able to make the changes and tweeks to your health regimen unless you are consistently tracking your results.
Be Realistic: Set Goals That Are Possible For the Timeline You Set, and Methods That Are Reasonable to Stick To.
If you are in your first year out of college, you wouldn't set your goal for the year to make 500k would you? Of course not, because for most people, that is just not possible. But, I know tons of people that set goals of losing 20 pounds, that don't even have 5 pounds to lose. Those same people might jump right in to trying to eat less than 20 carbs a day, or randomly going vegan, or tracking your calories to eat less than 1200 cals a day.
I believe that my same advice when it comes to weight loss, can be valid in almost any other goal you might have.
If you can't see yourself sticking to this lifestyle for the rest of your life, then you need to find another way.
Do not set yourself up to fail. Give yourself reasonable goals and make sure that whatever steps that you take to meet those goals are VERY possible for you to complete. Low ball it at first! Then once you have proven to yourself that you are capable of mastering the baby steps, you can start adding more difficulty or complexity to your steps to meet your goals! Nobody starts a race at the half way point.
I believe that my same advice when it comes to weight loss, can be valid in almost any other goal you might have.
If you can't see yourself sticking to this lifestyle for the rest of your life, then you need to find another way.
Do not set yourself up to fail. Give yourself reasonable goals and make sure that whatever steps that you take to meet those goals are VERY possible for you to complete. Low ball it at first! Then once you have proven to yourself that you are capable of mastering the baby steps, you can start adding more difficulty or complexity to your steps to meet your goals! Nobody starts a race at the half way point.
Invest In Your Education.
Some goals may require you to spend some money to reach them. Others, do not. But one thing that you should never feel bad about spending some money on is something that will educate you to meet that goal. Books are a great place to start. It is very easy to research books written by people that have mastered the goal you seek for yourself. Not a big reader? Podcasts are great too, and often free!
Certifications are also great ways to accomplish many goals! As someone who works in Public Relations, if my goal is to get a promotion, I might work to get my APR certification. If my goal is to grow as a fitness coach, I might train to get certified to teach different types of workout classes.
Investing in your education does not always mean you have to spend money. You can invest your time too.
One thing I love to do in my free time is look up scientific experiments/studies or scholarly articles on trending health and wellness fads. You can mess with the search settings in Google to filter out all the nonsense written by people that have educated themselves through word of mouth and Wikipedia and pull only results that are hardcore facts with evidence to back them up. It only took me 30 minutes to read through several experiments and studies written by neurosurgeons about the effects that CBD Oil has on your brain and its success rate on treating sleep disorders.
(Fun fact, it doesn't help you sleep (per say), but there has been a lot of evidence on CBD treating anxiety, which can be a cause of insomnia. Therefore, it's not a lie for a seller to say "CBD Oil can help you sleep," but it's not the whole truth either. Which is a common marketing strategy that many trending health and wellness brands will use. But, that is another topic for another blog post!)
Anyways, you have a world full of helpful information at your disposal, so why not invest some time (or money) into learning something that could help you reach your goals in half the time!
