Want better New Year’s Resolutions? Start with why last year’s failed!
The clock dramatically strikes 12am. Welcome to 2023! The new year is a symbolic threshold with seemingly endless possibilities and kinetic potential. Change and self improvement feel within reach. And if you’re like many, you commit paper to pen and write down your resolutions in earnest. Common ideas are to: lose weight, make more money, and find the love of your life.
But how did last year’s resolutions go? If you compare last year’s resolutions to this years, do you see a lot of repeat goals and a lot less progress than you’d like? Do you stop to ask, why you didn’t accomplish what you set out to do? And what does that tell you about which resolutions should be the priority for you this year?
Run a Diagnostics on Last Year’s Resolutions
Before committing to your resolutions from the most common resolutions, which are typically too generic for successful goal setting. Lets take a look at last year and see what worked and what didn’t.
Did you set resolutions last year? How did they come out? For me I had a few things:
- Learn to drive — Success (but not as comfortable with highways as I need to be)
- Make at least $500K total compensation per year — Success (but more than half in illiquid stock)
- Lose weight — Missed
- Make new friends — Missed
As you can see for me I succeeded in some areas but failed in others. It’s totally important to celebrate successes and take any helpful learnings from them. But let’s pause and do some problem solving for the misses.
Ask yourself, why did I miss at my goals last year?
Whatever the answer, you can typically guarantee that it will follow you into the new year. So rather than plowing forward making the same goals with no reflection, lets resolve to fix the underlying issue that caused you to miss your goals.
A great approach to this is to ask 5 whys.
The five whys is a quick approach to get from the problem to the root cause by continuing to reason about and ask why repeatedly. I’ll take myself as an example:
- Why did I not achieve my goals last year? I spent a lot of time focused on work. I prioritized work, and I didn’t have time for my own goals.
- Why did I value work to the point where I couldn’t achieve my personal goals? I genuinely tend to value my relationship with my job (and other people) higher than my relationship with myself. Requests from other people often feel far more urgent than things that are just for me.
- Why do requests from others take priority over my personal needs? I tended to take on the giver role in relationships causing them to feel one-sided to me. I was never happy with that and sometimes my boundaries weren’t respected leading to burnout. I often felt insecure looking for something else in terms of work or seeking out healthier relationships with other people.
- Why did I feel insecure seeking out healthier professional and personal relationships? I was afraid that was the best I could do professionally or personally. There’s an element of low self esteem. I also worried that I am not a capable or likable person.
- Why do I have low self esteem? I have some traumas in the past that say I am not worthy of healthy relationships.
Fundamental Reason: I’m prioritizing negative relationships (professional and personal) over my own well-being, because I do not believe I’m worthy of healthier ones.
You don’t have to stop at 5 whys. Do as many as you need. It helps you get to the heart of an issue in a short period of time.
Limiting Self Beliefs
Like my example, what can come out of your questioning can be very vulnerable and may speak to a very deep seated issue you’re dealing with in your day to day. That’s perfectly ok and normal. Limiting self beliefs also called schemas are ideas that limit the way you behave. They can play a huge role in how we see ourselves. And can routinely get in between us and our goals.
It’s important that whatever your resolutions are, they speak to helping shift your limiting beliefs. This is especially true, if you’re putting a repeat goal from last year to this year.
Because of the difficulty and magnitude of making fundamental changes, I suggest picking the one that brings you the most pain and focusing only on that one for the entire year. You may also find that fixing one issue solves problems related to the others. And sometimes limiting beliefs build on one another.
A couple resources that might help to learn more:
- Therapy, is the single best option I’ve found for identifying and overcoming negative self beliefs
- Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown
What did this decision cost me?
The next step is to prioritize the top issue. Identifying this for yourself is essential to avoid repeat mistakes. Try answering these questions:
- What was the impact of this belief/issue on my goals last year?
- How would this belief/issue impact my goals moving forward?
For me, prioritizing relationships that don’t serve me impacted my self esteem and kept me from prioritizing my goals. It’s time consuming, exhausting, and detrimental to my mental health. No matter what I do, I will likely be hindered by this issue in 2023 as well if I don’t make changes. And make accomplishing any new resolutions that much harder.
This is the one I’ll focus on this year.
What would solve this problem?
Now that you know what the problem and the impact, lets come up with a plan to solve it. For a problem like I described a vague solution is never useful. Things that are similar to “value myself more” isn’t enough. It just doesn’t tell me what actions I need to take. It’s only discussing the outcome I want.
And when accomplishing goals actions are all that matter.
Start with the goal post
First things first, you have to have some idea about what the end goal looks like. It’s important to have an outcome in mind first. The best way I’ve found to phrase it, if it’s not immediately obvious is to ask the question:
I will know this problem is better when….
The answer is typically the polar opposite of what the problem is. So given my problem was: I’m prioritizing negative personal and professional relationships over my own well-being.
The opposite serves as a great solution here:
- I prioritize my well-being over all other relationships. I am not so dependent on one relationship be that a job or a person that I cannot walk away if it is not serving me.
What’s the why?
We’ve got a good goal post, but what are the benefits of accomplishing this? Keeping this in mind can help both in prioritizing what to tackle and reading over when the going gets tough throughout the year.
What do you get once you achieve your goals?
In my case, I’ll take far better care of myself, because I have more time for myself. I won’t have to work hard to get people to like me, because I’ll only spend my time on the relationships that truly value me.
I’ll have the power to walk away if a relationship doesn’t serve me. I’ll feel relaxed in social and professional situations because the stakes are less dire and I’m more comfortable by myself. With more confidence, I’m able to do more and go farther in life with greater ease and have less of a focus on managing anxiety rather than just enjoying my life.
Make a concrete plan to get there
That sounds great! How do we get there? Well, this is where new years resolutions finally come into play.
- I prioritize my well-being over all other relationships. I am not so dependent on one relationship be that a job or a person that I cannot walk away if it is not serving me.
What ACTIONS can I take monthly/weekly/daily that would solve the problem?
- Write down my boundaries on how I’d like to be treated in a relationship be it a job, a friend or a romantic partner. What are the non-negotiables/deal breakers? What would make me happy but I can be more flexible about?
- Set the boundaries with those relationships and prepare to remove all that are not able to meet my new standard.
- Create opportunities to foster new relationships that meet my new standards.
- Create nonnegotiable rules for taking care of myself. These things happen no matter what!
The job has a small caveat that I need income coming in. So for that in particular I’m adding:
- Diversify my streams of income outside of my W2 job.
These are great, but there specificity missing to each of these that need to be filled in. You want your goals so specific that someone else would be able to take the actions you describe and get the result you’re looking for.
SMART Goals
SMART is a common framework for making your goals more specific. It’s an easy way to bring your goals from the abstract to reality.
It stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time Bound
I’ll take my example of: Diversify my streams of income outside of my W2 job.
Earn $200K independent of my W2 income by the end of 2023. I’ll do this by starting my own consulting business, blogging/vlogging as I go, and picking up side work if needed to fill in the gaps.
Set up Milestones to keep on track
I prefer breaking the goal down into quarterly, then month, then weekly goals that help to solidify what I am going to do. It also illuminates if I’ve over committed my goals.
Q1: Earn $50K, start a blog, start a youtube channel, create an LLC, etc…
Q4: Earn $50K, write 40 blog posts, 24 youtube videos, 4 clients, etc…
A nice resource that outlines this way of goal setting can be found in the The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran
Regular Check-ins
And lastly, check in at regular intervals (at least quarterly) to make sure you’re on track. The entire point of breaking the goal down into milestones is so you can change course when things go awry. I’d recommend adding an appointment on your calendar to review. You’ll be out of office to your friends and colleagues for about an hour as you review and adjust goals.
For the review, I’d also recommend going through a mini version of the initial goal setting exercise by:
- Congratulate yourself on all the goals you’ve accomplished.
- Asking what you accomplished and what you missed
- For the ones missed what was the root cause of the miss? Use the 5 whys. Is there a limiting self belief holding you back?
- What was the impact on the missed goal? How do you get back on track? Should goals or milestones be adjusted to accommodate the miss?
Conclusion
No matter what you’re approach, these tips should help better clairify why misses happen in goal setting and how to get the most out of it. I’m a firm believer that failures teach as much if not more about what doesn’t work. It’s just a matter of problem solving around it.
I’m looking forward to the new year and checking back in as I go. Letting you know how my personal goals progress.
Does this goal setting method resonate with you? Feel free to comment below!
Happy goal setting! And Happy new year! :)