Start keeping up your resolutions — My recipe
Are you like me wondering for too long what is the secret behind keeping up with our resolutions?
What makes some people succeed and some not? Is it only a matter of motivation or setting up SMART (Specific — Measurable — Achievable — Realistic — Timely bound) objectives? Are there other aspects on top of those?
I could not say how long I have been asking these questions to myself… endlessly until a few weeks ago, I suddenly realized what ingredients I was missing to elaborate my recipe for it.
Why now, you may ask? Well, with time flying by, I get through my 40’s crisis looking for answers on who I am, what’s the meaning of my life, what I still want to achieve, and definitely, how do I want to spend my life for the upcoming years.
Out of this period that I can compare to an archaeological excavation (I was the kind of person who did not give credit to my thoughts nor to the associated emotions before), I learned how close my achievement was depending on having a vision of oneself. The way I choose to look at myself, what is it that I would strive for in my own life, and why I would do it.
Not that I live blindly without any perspectives or expectations… No. I have always been someone ambitious and expected a lot from myself before others.
Not that I did not have any action plan to get more out of life… No. I have always enjoyed checking off boxes on hundreds of “to-do lists” to achieve my personal as well as professional goals.
Not that I missed having convictions in what I achieved so far… No.
Rather, I was completely missing the point: I did not commit to change, and I was trying to drive changes at my own expense. I was not putting myself at the center of every change I was intending to make.
Here are the 5 rules I implemented in my daily life to reverse things and start keeping up with my resolutions:
Rule 1: Observe your mind to learn more about your nature
You know how it works, right? We live in an era of immediacy where people are pressed to adapt and have started living at a pace where everyone is running after the clock.
Your resolutions tell a lot about what kind of person you are: your personality, values, and imperfections. You maximize your chances to keep them up as long as they are in line with your nature.
Therefore, you have to stop living a life that you haven’t designed for yourself. Take a look back at the number of actions that you’ve undertaken because of some external factors (opinion of others, fear to be yourself…) versus the ones that were intentionally in line with what you want.
The first step towards change is to bring clarity on what makes you unique and what is it that you need for yourself. Observe the way your mind steers thoughts, triggers emotions, and invokes actions to be undertaken. To achieve doing this, I set up a powerful daily routine with moments of meditation, journaling, and the practice of gratitude. Consider those as a commitment, as appointments with yourself — that you would not miss it for any reason. To get all benefits from your routine, what counts the most is your discipline and your consistency. Keep it up even though it would mean less time than what you set at the beginning.
With meditation, I learned to observe my thoughts and take back the commands of my mind gradually and enjoy the present moment whereas, with journaling, I learned to explore my thoughts and decide which ones are worth developing to enjoy my life more.
Rule 2: Become a forward thinker
Your resolution needs to be attached to a vision. Otherwise, you’ll risk not being in the position to keep it up if it has just come out of the blue.
Start practicing the visualization — where you dream of a better version of yourself. Ask yourself what kind of person you’d like to become within the next 1–2 years. Pick up the domains of your life you want to change most, then break it down into a 1-month time plan.
Develop a vision of yourself every year by jotting down with as much precision as possible what you want to achieve and why this change is important in your life
The next step will consist of setting SMART (Specific — Measurable — Achievable — Realistic — Timely bound) resolutions that will serve your vision. Draw a list of what resolutions you want to go for, prioritize them according to their impact on your life and the benefit you’ll get from them.
As you’ll need some practice before you can master how to set your resolution and keep them up, I advise you to start with one at a time for a 1-month duration minimum.
Last but not least, define upfront what actions you’d have to undertake to achieve your resolution.
Rule 3: Embrace change for your sole benefit
In every resolution, there is an anticipated change ahead. The mistake I made for the longest time was to set up resolutions against myself. I was forcing myself to do things that did not bring any joy nor fulfillment to me. I was driving my life with an impressive list of “I must have to do or complete this …” which implied some unfair trade-offs were happening.
What I learned is that nothing must be done…ever!
I learned to change my perception: Where I used to see an endless list of actions or tasks, I rather do arbitrage between choices I make and ensure that I spend the necessary time to work on them during the day. Not only that I preserve myself from thoughts of stress or overflow. Also, I made this change for my sole benefit.
You remember the pitfall of not relying on external factors, right? You have the command of your ship. Walkthrough your action plan on a daily basis and decide what actions would bring you as close as possible to what you plan to achieve. Those are your essentials of the day!
Rule 4: Explore the dark side of your action plan
As both sides of the same coin, your action plan will reveal itself at the end of the day, the actions that you succeeded in completing or those that you did not.
What I learned is that the reasons why you did not manage to complete some actions are precious. Don’t judge yourself badly. Instead, stay eager to understand why you did not complete them especially if those were part of your essentials. What thoughts popped up in your mind? What emotions did you feel?
From there, you start looking closely at what’s on the dark side of your plan. Those are your improvement areas (skills or competencies that you would have to develop to grow in your life)
Rule 5: Promote effort and sacrifice
To keep up with your resolutions, you need one more ingredient: struggle for them and sacrifice sufficient time and energy for them.
Even there, you need discipline and consistency. Plan every day upfront with a dedicated time spent working hard to make your essentials true. The more you put effort into a change, the closer you’ll be to succeed. It does not prevent you from failing.
Failure is not an issue. It’s rather an opportunity to increase your efforts. From the eyes of a perfectionist, I used to see life as a binary experience. Either you succeed in everything you do, or you fail. I was not capable to appreciate my small victories. I learned that change is a process. There is no judgment to have. Instead, accept that things would take time and effort to become concrete.
