As the New Year approached, you might have seen or read articles on why New Year’s resolutions never work and are best avoided.
It’s a trope that media outlets love to roll out this time of year.
It’s nonsense.
New Year’s resolutions (and goal setting in general) work for those motivated to achieve the desired results, work hard to meet their goals, and set sensible, specific, effort-centered resolutions.
Since 2010, I have been posting my New Year’s resolutions on my blog and social media and charting my progress month by month. While my New Year’s resolution success rate over the past fourteen years stands at just over 55 percent, my life has changed immensely thanks to my yearly goal setting and pursuit of these goals.
This can be true for anyone. My advice:
- Examine your life closely for opportunity and desire.
- Identify what you could and should be doing.
- Stop allowing inertia, complacency, and fear to stand in the way.
- Set specific, measurable goals not predicated by the efforts or decisions of others.
- Make a plan to accomplish each.
- Check on progress regularly and create a schedule for this.
- Create a system of accountability.
- Accept failure as a necessary part of the process.
- Embrace incremental change instead of enormous leaps.
- Remind yourself repeatedly about what your life would look like if you achieved your goals.
- Remember that most people fail to accomplish their New Year’s resolutions, but you’re better than most.
Doing so can truly change your life, even if you’re only succeeding 55% of the time.
Here are just a few of many examples:
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In 2010, I resolved to floss every day. I have not missed a day of flossing since. It’s simply become something I do.
Incidentally, if you would like to start flossing, I suggest that you place the floss in the shower. Doing this creates an incentive:
Who would pass up an extra 30 seconds in the shower to be productive and extend your life?
Did you know that flossing regularly increases lifespan? Researchers have found this to be true again and again.
I gave this advice at a book talk once (in response to a question about how routines make me more productive), and about six months later, a woman wrote to me to say that while she appreciated everything about my talk, the advice on flossing had changed her life. She’s flossed daily since my talk, and her gums have never been so healthy and pain-free.
It’s not complicated. You, too, can be a dental nerd like me.
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Also, in 2010, I established the goal of losing 10 pounds, and I have since lost 68 pounds and entirely changed how I live.
- I exercise almost every day.
- I know the calorie count of almost every food item that I eat.
- I’ve permanently reduced meal portions.
- I look better, feel better, and have more energy than ever before.
That single goal, set 14 years ago and achieved incrementally, has changed how I eat, exercise, and live ever since, and it will likely provide me with a longer, healthier life.
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To reduce my cholesterol levels, I resolved to eat three servings of oatmeal a week in 2011. Since then, I have continued to eat at least that much oatmeal as part of my workday lunch. It’s a perfect midday meal: Easy to make, filling, low in calories, and delicious.
Some of my colleagues think I’m crazy for eating the same thing almost every day, but absent any other change, my cholesterol dropped 40 points in a year and is now well within healthy guidelines.
While so many people are on medication to control their cholesterol, I am not.
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2011, after two years of saying I would do it, I finally resolved to drop my name in the hat and attempt to tell a story at The Moth. That resolution, perhaps more than any other, has changed my life.
Since that first Moth StorySLAM in New York City, I’ve attended over 200 Moth events nationwide. Performed in many of their prestigious Mainstage shows and Moth Ball events. Competed in 105 StorySLAMs. Won 59 of them along with 9 GrandSLAM championships.
More importantly, storytelling has changed my career trajectory. Performing for The Moth and then around the world led to the launch of Speak Up, the storytelling organization Elysha and I own and operate.
Also Storyworthy, both the bestselling book and business by the same name.
I also have a successful consulting business with everyone from Fortune 100 companies to Olympic athletes, clergy members, and the FBI. It’s led to my public speaking career, including a dozen TEDx Talks. It turned me into a stand-up comedian, performing last year at the New York City Comedy Festival. It ultimately led to the writing and performing of my first solo show.
This year, I’ll publish my second book on storytelling. I’ve joined a start-up centered on storytelling. I’m writing my second solo show while preparing to tour my first.
One goal – put my name in the hat at a Moth StorySLAM – expanded my life beyond imagination.
This is what happens when you refuse to allow inertia and fear (as I was doing) to stand in your way.
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For nearly ten years, my resolutions included “Find a way to keep Elysha home for one more year with the kids.”
But as I wrote that goal down, I didn’t know how we’d ever live on one income with two kids for another year. I hadn’t yet begun my speaking and consulting career, so unless I sold another book or landed a boatload of DJ gigs, I didn’t think it was possible.
Even if I managed to publish a book and work a bunch of weddings, I wasn’t sure if it could happen.
But as soon as I wrote the goal down, my mindset instantly shifted from “Can I make this happen?” to “How am I going to make it happen?”
Writing down a goal is a tangible means by which you both acknowledge its importance and make yourself accountable for trying to attain it. It moves the goal from a “ridiculous pipe dream” to a “necessary, realistic possibility.”
Somehow, Elysha and I figured it out every year for a decade. An essential part of that was setting that goal at the beginning of each year.
Of all the things I’ve done in the last 14 years, I’m proudest of this goal. I know how much my wife and children benefited from that decade she spent at home.
So don’t let anyone fool you. New Year’s resolutions (and goal setting in general) can change your life for the upcoming year and sometimes forever if you treat the process seriously and apply yourself using some or all of my recommendations.
It’s not too late.
Remember: Based on my completion rate over the last 14 years, I would receive an F on my report card.
A score of 55% is not exactly scintillating.
Yet I know with all my heart that my life is unimaginably better because of my willingness to set goals every year and work like hell to accomplish them. I also know that many of the things that have made my life better would never have happened had I not spent the time to choose and plan and strive for their success.
You, too, can be a failure like me. I believe in you.
