How Successful People Make New Year’s Resolutions

Tips to make resolutions that will set you up for success

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year? If you haven’t yet, that’s okay, there is still time. If you have, good job, you’re starting the New Year off on the right foot. But are your resolutions structured to ensure you keep to them?

In this article I will look at how successful people make and stick to their New Year’s Resolutions.

The internet is flooded with articles and blogs on the different types of New Year’s resolutions that people tend to make. However, regardless of what your resolution is, a 2018 global report states that less than 23% of New Year’s resolutions are followed past the first month of the New Year.

If you are someone, who has kept to a New Year’s Resolution past the first month, you know better than anyone else the amount of persistence and perseverance required to successfully follow through on your resolutions.

Think back on previous years and ask yourself

How many times have you closely tracked your resolution beyond January of that year?

How many times have you tracked it past June?

I confess, In the 17 years of my adult life where I have come up with New Year’s resolutions, it’s hard to remember a year I tracked my resolutions beyond March. This is in spite of arming myself with tools and techniques to continuously stay motivated to fulfill my resolutions. Most often, the goal I had set in the New Year lost its priority and relevance as the year progressed.

This year, instead of defining “NEW” resolutions that I am sure would lose their charm just as quickly, I decided to draw inspiration for my New Year’s resolution from my personal and professional successes and challenges from last year. Our memories are fresh with the successes we cherished and challenges we encountered over the past year.

Try applying these two powerful strategies used by successful people to help create your resolutions for the New Year.

1. A New Year’s resolution created from last year’s achievement or success.

2. A New Year’s resolution created from last year’s challenge or failure.

One of the reasons why New Year’s resolutions lose their charm is that the resolution fails to relate the present to the past. In an attempt to make every New Year new and successful, we overwhelm ourselves with a bunch of “new”resolutions hoping to achieve most, if not all of them. This is analogous to becoming rich overnight, it just doesn’t happen. Life and career coaches state that the soil has to be fertile for a resolution to find its place to grow in your life. And that is possible only if the resolution has a degree of relevance to your achievements or challenges from the past year.

Resolutions created from last year’s achievement or success

It is natural for human beings to cherish and celebrate success of any magnitude. And if there was any success or achievement from the last year that was coincidental and something that you did not work towards achieving, then you have more reasons to create a New Year’s resolution to identify the path to make that success more repetitive and permanent. If you had a minuscule success on something that had a positive influence on your career or personal life in the last year, you can work towards creating a New Year’s resolution to sustain and make the minuscule success more phenomenal this year.

Successful business transformations and acquisitions are not thought, planned or made in a New Year. Novel business ideas from entrepreneurs are not a byproduct of New Year’s resolution. Such things are quite organic and are grown from careful retrospection of past years’ successes and challenges.

How often have you read about crazy New Year’s resolution that have less relevance to the past and are from entrepreneurs and leaders you admire?

If you had positive career growth in the last year, you clearly know the right levers to operate in order to scale your progression and make this year more phenomenal than the last. Make a New Year’s resolution to define and follow a path to your career progression based on the achievement or success from last year. If you figured out that tuning your character or personality or changing your approach in dealing with important things in life has led to better relationship with your friends and family, then New Year’s is the time to make a resolution to put that into permanent action in your life.

If your peers or your boss complimented a job that was well done, then your New Year’s resolution could be to create a formal plan to master that skill.

The art of making smart resolutions is knowing what you are good at and finding ways to make yourself even better.

Resolutions created from last year’s failures and challenges

Making New Year’s resolutions based on last year’s challenges is a lot easier than making resolutions based on last year’s success. It only requires a careful introspection on the skills and qualities that you wish you possessed in the previous year.

If you envy someone for something they are good at, then make a resolution to master that skill. During your last year’s performance review, if your boss suggested a skill or ability that you can improve, then make a New Year’s resolution to learn or master that skill. Such resolutions compliment your personal and professional development.

In the previous year, you may have had moments of embarrassment caused by a lack of knowledge on a specific subject or insufficient proficiency on a skill. Create a resolution and plan its execution to turn your embarrassment into an opportunity.

In essence, New Year’s resolutions that have an association to the success and challenges of the past year turns out to be an endeavor that is long lasting. Resolutions that have an ample success rate are the ones that are grown out of willingness to embrace and scale past success and a desire to resolve and address past challenges.

I wish you good luck with persistence and perseverance on your New Year’s resolutions.

Please write to me about your strategies in creating New Year’s resolutions and the techniques you followed to make them sustainable and long lasting.

Email: lakshmi.baskaran@leonardo.com / venkatlakshmi.b@gmail.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lakshmibaskaran