Make Your Resolutions a Reality
Did you make one or more resolutions for the new year?
Well, according to a Marist Poll released in December, you’re in the minority with only 33% of Americans saying they made a resolution last year.
And of those who did make resolutions, 65% reported that they had kept it for part of the year while 35% didn’t even get out of the gate.
If you want to be one of the very small minority who actually makes their resolutions a reality, read the following tips.
- Put it in writing. That means actual hand-writing, not typing up a list. When thoughts go from brain to hand, pen and then paper your feelings of commitment to your goals increase.
- Be realistic. I believe in setting big goals, but ‘make a million dollars’ starting from zero is probably a pipe dream. Try ‘increase my income by 1 (or 2 or 5) thousand dollars a month’. Pick a figure that will relieve your current financial burden yand give you some breathing room.
- Brainstorm. How will you achieve your goals? How much time you have to work on your goals? Will you work one or two hours a day during the week, or work on the weekends? What resources do you need? Hosting? Education? Someone to help with the kids while you work? A partner with writing skills to augment your technical skills, or vice versa? Write down everything that comes to mind.
- Create your plan. Organize your ideas from ‘Brainstorm’ above into an list of steps ordered by sequence and/or priorities.
- Set deadlines. A goal without a deadline is just a wish. Saying ‘start a blog’ is meaningless unless you add a timeframe, i.e. ‘start a blog by January 10th’ and ‘write 10 core articles by January 20th’, etc.
- Commit. Sign your list of resolutions and place it on a bulletin board where you can see it every day.
- Reward success. If you tend to chastise yourself for missing deadlines, turn that thinking around, because punishment is a lousy motivator. Plan rewards for yourself instead, so you’ll have something good to look forward to when you do achieve your goals.
Now work your plan!
Did you make a resolution? A plan to keep it? Do you have any additional tips for our readers that will help them keep theirs? Please share by leaving a comment below.
Best of success to everyone in sticking with their resolutions (goals) for 2010.
Related Posts
- New Year’s Resolutions: Your Turn
- My List of Resolutions is Short this Year
- What Have You Done?
- About Your Resolutions for 2006…
- Rosalind’s Resolutions for 2006
Posted / Revised on January 2, 2010 under Articles & News, Success Tips  |
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Rosalind Gardner is a Super Affiliate blogger, author, speaker, and Internet marketing consultant. For more info, subscribe to her No-Hype, No-BS, No Spam NPT newsletter and join Affiliate Blogger PRO to get answers to all your affiliate marketing questions. Thanks for visiting!
While I’ve made no specific resolution for New Year’s; for a few I have been working on a goal of earning $100 a day online by April 1, 2010. I’ve written the goal on paper and have committed to it. My major problems right now are fleshing out my plan, setting deadlines within the goal, and rewarding my successes.
The only tip I can offer is to do something each day even if it is very small.
Yes, New Year resolutions should probably be renamed ‘active annual plans’ if they are to be done right and executed. Resolutions have had a bad rap because most people are unsuccessful with them. They were merely wishes rather than commitments. So this post was timely since many people are thinking about resolutions now. If we all made commitments to do more than just thinking, we will all be more successful.
I made no specific resolutions either. But I got some things in my mind that needs to be changed and improved. New year resolutions should be taken seriously to take effect.
Awesome Ros!
That’s a great way to get the new year off to a great start. I particularly agree with point 1 and 7. If you do anything do these two!
Why?
Well writing goals down is so important. It’s a powerful way to make you realise what you really want. The act of writing them down makes your subconscious kick into action also.
Point 7 because I see so many people (including myself!) who have that kind of “go get it” personality kick themselves when they miss a goal. Not only this they don’t reward themselves when they achieve a goal. Big mistake.
We all need a WIN now and again and when you do WIN you need to reward yourself.
Great list. Go for your goals and dreams.
Matt
I’ve created one primary goal of bringing my residual income up to $5,000(specific result), by July 21st 2010(due date, my wife’s b’day, easy to remember)
i’d like to add/expand a few points if i may…
get a sheet of paper and *write down* you primary goal,
think forward from where you are, then imagine you already
met your goal and think backward from there, write down
every imaginable task that you would need to accomplish,
organize these in order of importance on a new sheet of paper,
label each task a,b,c,d,e – then label all the a tasks a1,a2,a3,
etc, same for b and c, label stuff to be delegated to someone else
with d1,d2,d3,etc, e is for stuff that you will eliminate.
finally reorganize your whole list by priority, put a due date
next to each task, get started, if you need a mentor or books/tutorial
get them.
try to reward yourself for each task – get some chocalate kisses or
fruits or a few beers, lol, reward yourself only after each task.
this is the best course i’ve ever had on the subject, and it’s audio, so you can listen to it over and over again >> http://tinyurl.com/yamex29
if you’re really lazy delegate/outsource as much as possible, especially non-important tasks, or stuff that you just plain would rather not do.
biggest tip – every minute you spend planning out every detail makes you more committed and saves you lots of time re-doing and fixing mistakes later.
by breaking it down into single tasks and doing something everyday you don’t get overwhelmed, if you do get help, or break the current task into parts – and most importantly having a daily task prevents you wasting time trying to figure out what you intend to do each day – you just grab your list and do the next task – they are already prioritized and well thought out if you follow every step above.
cheers,
Michael.
Rosalind,
This is a really good post (and timely).
I was surprised by that statistic that only 35% of people actually even made a resolution; but not surprised by how many don’t reach their goal.
It’s not even 7 days into the New Year and I’ve seen countless people start smoking again, quit their diet, or whatever their “resolution” was…
If people really are serious about reaching their goals, they’ll follow those steps you outlined above, as time consuming or even silly as they may seem.
I hope you and all of your readers reach their goals in 2010!
Sincerely,
Brian T. Edmondson
Thank you for the “homework”, I am going to give myself until this coming Monday to list all my goals for 2010 so that I won’t risk leaving any of them out.
So far, the #2 goal is to save up $47 for your eBook Super Affiliate Handbook…
Thanks for the heads up this time round i must achieve my goals especially in my small business thanks