The tree is dressed up. The mood is festive. New Year is just around the corner. It's time to promise yourself the next year to live somehow so that it will be different from all the years lived. When we come up with New Year's promises, desires and goals, our motivation goes off scale. At this moment, we are really ready to move mountains and do whatever is necessary to make our plans come true. What happens next? Why is it so difficult to keep New Year's promises and what to do about it?
To be honest, nothing and no one will make you fulfill your New Year's promises. You can even tell all your numerous friends about them on social networks, hoping that their support and reproaches will motivate you to implement your plans.
But practice shows that nothing will help until you take your promises seriously. Only a systematic approach will help to force yourself to fulfill the New Year's promises. What exactly needs to be done?
Step 1. Write down your promises
It is very useful not only to digest thoughts in your head and dream while talking to yourself, but to write down everything that you want to achieve, receive, change. To get started, you can make a list of your promises or desires.
This list can contain as many items as you want. They usually stop at 50 or 100. You can have less or more.
Step 2. Evaluate - is this really what you want?
If you just make a list and forget about it, some of the points from it can miraculously come true. It happens to everyone. But to get even better results, you need to go further.
How important is it to you to keep your promise? Ask yourself the question: do you really want to get what you intended?
You can rank all your New Year's promises on a scale from 1 to 10: 1 - you don't want to at all, 10 - you really want it to happen.
Select those promises that you rated 9 or 10 points.
Step 3. Consider what happens if the promise is not kept
Now look at those promises that scored 9 or 10, and think about what happens if you don't keep the promise. What positive and negative consequences await you?
At this step, you will get the feeling that there are desires on your list that need to be fulfilled immediately, without putting them off any longer.
As a result, five to seven New Year's promises should remain for fulfillment in the new year. Can I get more? Sure. But then it will be difficult to focus.
Researchers generally do not recommend setting more than three goals per year. You can listen to them too.
Step 4: turn promises into goals
No New Year's promise will come true if it is not turned into a goal. But the goal can be set in such a way that it will never be achieved.
For example: "I want to lose weight."
It seems clear what you want to get in the end, but there is no link to the date. How to determine that the goal has been achieved is also not clear.
A well-formulated goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, limited in time.
For example, you can reformulate the goal as follows: "I want to get rid of 10 kilograms of excess weight by May 31, 2019".
Step 5. Break down the movement towards the goal into steps
An important step that everyone misses is goal decomposition, that is, planning the steps to achieve it.
For a plan to be effective, break the movement down into small steps. For example, it is clear that in order to lose extra pounds, you need to establish nutrition and play sports.
If you just take these two big steps, it is unlikely that anything will work out. Each of them must be broken down into smaller ones.
Step 6. Track movement throughout the year
Goals and plans have been drawn up. The only thing left to do is to learn how to control the progress of the plan.
To do this, you can create a table in which to note every day whether something has been done to achieve the goal or not. This is the easiest way.
You also need to remember about the reward. To keep you motivated, it's best to think about how you will reward yourself at each stage.
But it is better not to use fines. They can, on the contrary, discourage the desire to act.
Step 7 (optional). Seek a coach if you go astray
Don't forget that you can reach your goals with support. We are used to dealing with everything on our own and forget that we can always get help that will speed up the movement towards the goal.
For example, you can turn to a coach. Why to him? Because coaching accompanies you towards your goal. Working with a coach, you open up new horizons for yourself and receive professional support.
Try it, and you will definitely be able to keep not one, but several New Year's promises at once!
