Instead of setting resolutions just to quit them, below are four strategies to help you cultivate real change this year.
Randi Braun, CEO of Something Major, is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work.
It’s called Quitters Day. It’s the day each year (the second Friday in January) by which time most Americans will have quit their New Year’s resolutions.
That’s because resolutions don’t work: They’re bold declarations that may sound fabulous with a glass of champagne in our hands at a New Year’s Eve party, but they rarely lead to the transformation we’re longing for. Instead of setting resolutions just to quit them, below are four strategies to help you cultivate real change this year.1. Be specific.
There’s a common mantra in business that “what gets measured gets done,” and the same is true for creating real change in our lives. It’s impossible to achieve our goals if we don’t name them.
Consider the common resolution of “getting my finances in better shape.” What does that even mean? Is it setting a budget, saving more for retirement, shopping less or something completely different?
Getting clear about what we want to say yes to enables us to make a clear action plan, including concrete next steps, while a lack of specificity in our goals conveniently lets us hide out from the hard work of pursuing them. If you’re not sure where to start this year, you can break down your goals by considering questions like: What do I want more of/less of in my personal life this year? In my work life? The answers to those questions are your goals, and they can be as big as “scoring my dream job” or as small as “getting outside more.”
Once you have a list of specific goals, choose just one to three max for the year to keep your goals more achievable and less overwhelming. Remember, as the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, “You can’t have it all, all at once,” so prioritize just a few areas of focus that you will commit to investing your time and energy into.
