Never give up on resolutions

These days, many people do not make resolutions for the New Year.

The reason is that most people are giving up on resolutions because they have discovered that they achieve little or nothing at all. I want to argue that we should not give up on resolutions. We should keep trying. Here is why.

First of all, if you stop trying, you are as good as failed. When you keep trying, you maintain the hope and chance of winning. Why lose and fail before the race even begins?

I have also struggled with my resolutions and although at times I have been tempted to give up on them, I have continued to make and use them. Over time, I have seen some improvement in how much of the resolutions I achieve.

I have come to the conclusion that even if I achieve half of my resolutions, I am much better than if I had none in which case I would either achieve nothing at all or achieve things randomly without any plan.

First, you need to believe again. For me, I had to start believing in myself again by looking positively at the few things I had achieved out of my resolutions. I analysed resolutions of the previous three to five years and I discovered that typically I achieved between 40 and 60 percent of what I had planned.

I then checked to see whether I failed to achieve more because of setting wrong or too high targets or because I had exerted less effort or whether it was an issue of lack of focus. It turned out that it was a mixture of all that plus that a few new and pretty important things had emerged in the course of life.

When I factored in the things that were not anticipated at the time of resolutions then I found that my score was better than I had believed.

The other way to begin to believe again is by focusing on the positives. List the few things that you did well in the previous year without considering what you did not do or your failures. You need to focus on positive energy, positive things and successes.

Negativity does not help in achieving success. Additionally, you can start believing again by drawing few resolutions so that your achievement rate can be higher. This will generate self-belief and self-confidence, which will propel you to do more resolutions.

If you used to have 10 resolutions, you can start again by just listing three major things you want to focus on the whole year and if you can achieve one or two of those, you will be much better off than without any resolutions. Then next year, you can increase to five and go on like that. It is about rebuilding your confidence and building a culture of resolutions and achievement.

Another important aspect that helped me to rejuvenate my resolutions practice was active and continuous monitoring and evaluation. Most of us set our resolutions in January and then forget about them hoping that somehow they will be achieved and next time we remember to go back to them is in November at best or December or even next January at the worst level.

What we really need to be doing is to review our progress on at least a monthly basis. So, every month end, we ought to check our progress against the set resolutions.  This means that we can identify any gaps in time to be able to close the gaps.

Finally, support! I found this quite important in 2019. I had a resolution that I had carried on for three or four years without achieving.

In January 2019, I called three friends that I knew could help and support me on that important resolution and by mid-year the resolution of four years was achieved through the support of one of the three friends I had asked to help.

I hope that the tips above will help you to not give up on resolutions, but rather to do better than before.

Good luck as you rise and shine via rejuvenated resolutions in 2021!