New Years Resolutions that work Part 2 - Why bother?

If you read the last blog and followed the steps outlined you will now have a clearly defined ambitious goal that you are particularly passionate about and with a definite timeframe. The next part is probably the hardest part of the whole process.

Why do you want your goal? Why is it that important to you? Think very carefully about your answers and try and find the underlying reasons. Why do you want to lose weight? The simple answer might be because you will look better. The next question is what’s wrong with the way you look now? How will losing weight make you look better and why is that important? How will losing weight affect your life? What effect will it have on your self confidence, relationships, professional life, health etc etc. Really analyse why you want to lose weight.

Similarly you will need a very good reason to train for a marathon because they involve a lot of training and they hurt like hell, so unless you've got some very good reasons to put yourself through that pain then you won’t make it. Think about what is it about the marathon that appeals to you? Why do you need to run one? How will it improve your quality of life?

Now you’ve got the reasons why you need to think about someone else apart from yourself. How will setting about achieving your goals affect your relationships and your work? Will it be a positive effect or negative? Is the goal worth aiming for if it has a negative effect? How much support will you have from friends and peers to achieve your goal? You may decide that although you really want to do a marathon, maybe just after your wife has had a baby is not the best time or you may reason that although exercising to lose weight will take 3-4 hours out of the short amount of time you have with your family the benefits to them in terms of your health, your mood, your ability to have quality time with them instead of snapping at them because your stressed outweighs the reduction in time.

This may require some slight modification of your goals to fit in with the higher priorities in your life. If you are an Olympic athlete then your highest priority is your sport; everything else must come second. Most of us aren’t Olympic athletes so we have other priorities such as family and work that must take precedence. The time and money you have available will to some extent be determined by these higher priorities in life. However sometimes we use these as excuses when they needn’t be.

If you really want something and that something is going to make you a better person in some way then there is not too many loved one’s who would get in the way of that. Don’t make a judgement on what they might say, discuss what you are trying to achieve with them, let them see where you are coming from and then talk about how that fits in with the priorities in your lives.

Now that we’ve got our loved ones on board with us we can start really connecting with the reality of achieving the goal. Write down or visualise how you will feel when you have achieved your goal, think about it in as much detail as possible. Think about how it will feel to weigh 3 stone lighter, what you will look like, what kind of clothes you will wear, how confident you will be, what your self esteem will be like, how it will effect your relationships, your work – both current and future. Think about how it will feel crossing the finish line of the marathon, what emotions will be running through your mind, who will be there to share in the moment with you, how will you feel a week later, in what way will it effect you in the longer term.

Once you have done this write down or visualise what you will feel like in a year’s time if you haven’t achieved what you set out to. How disappointed you will feel, how much more weight will you have put on, what it will be like to be another dress size bigger, how will you feel watching the marathon from the sideline.

If you can’t really visualise or imagine how you will feel if you achieve your goal and you cant imagine how you would feel if you didn’t achieve it then obviously that goal is not that important to you. Highly motivated people have a very keen sense of what it will feel like to realise their ambitions and also how it would feel to not even try.

In the next blog we’ll talk about creating a plan and what you need to do on a daily basis to keep to your plan and stay motivated.