Happy New Year’s: 365 days of …
2019 is officially here and with it comes 365 blank pages to fill.
If I remember correctly, only around 8% of people actually stick to and achieve their goals. That’s a pretty small percentage of success, and as such this year instead of making resolutions and then eventually breaking them; I am going to make a few commitments for the year.
Resolution: “a firm decision to do or not to do something.”
Commitment: “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc.”
The definitions above seem pretty similar, so why commitments instead of resolutions? A resolution is a simple decision, and breaking a resolution doesn’t seem to mean much. There is no ‘oomph’ behind a resolution, and no emotion either. Perhaps this is a personal opinion, since I have not historically upheld New Year resolutions, but ‘commitment’ (to me) is a whole new ballgame. It’s a powerful statement to say you are committed/dedicated to accomplishing something and failure to succeed puts personal credibility at stake.
Furthermore, in my case, resolutions tend to be lofty goals that are pretty damn hard to pull off and commitments are less daunting and things I can achieve with incremental steps. I think this is because commitments tend to be realistic and with ego/credibility at-stake … much more accomplishable.
So hopefully you’ve gotten some commitments laid out (I have roughly 4). What’s next? I’d suggest keeping your commitments to yourself or only letting those very close to you in on them. I am not a big fan of sharing with the world via the interwebs and having others hold you accountable. This is a commitment (not a simple resolution) and you should be personally motivated and (haha) committed enough to accomplish it. I am also a big believer in Planning, Executing and Evaluating. There is a ton of value in spending some time, thinking about how you are going to make sure the items you’ve laid out can be successfully accomplished. I suppose we can add a bit of fun to these said commitments and add a fail modifier in the evaluation step as well.
What does this all look like? As an example, let’s take getting/being healthy as a commitment:
I am going to commit to being healthy in 2019. To accomplish this, I plan on (1) working out 3x per week, (2) eating out for lunch 2x per week, (3) going out for drinks 2x per week and (4) eating out for dinner 2x per week. I plan on monitoring and accomplishing this commitment to being healthy by tracking these items, until they become a habit. If I miss my weekly goal, then I will (1) adjust the following week accordingly (for example, an extra lunch means only 1x lunch the following week), and (2) donate an extra $10 to the food bank.
Note: I personally use the Loop Habit Tracker app and would highly recommend it. It’s free and insanely easy to use.
The above, is an action plan of sorts in how I am going to commit to being healthy in 2019. It has defined to-do’s and a method to monitor them. It also has an evaluation step and a if/then clause on failure to accomplish (which should help the following week). All-in-all it’s much more than a resolution, where I’d simply say “I want to lose weight” or “I want to work out”.
So that’s my thought on New Year resolutions for 2019. Who knows, maybe I’m way off base? Do you have a differing opinion, or do you agree? Let me know in the comments.
Here’s to a successful, happy and healthy 2019!
