Results Not Resolutions

Do you make resolutions at the beginning of each year?

With the new decade upon us, now is the time to review, renew and reignite your plans for what you want the next year to hold in store.

So how can you create results and not just empty resolutions? Simple. Treat the new year as you would any other project and begin with the end in mind.

Take a moment to sit quietly and visualize yourself one year from now. What do you want to have accomplished? Who do you want to have become in the process? What kind of relationships do you want have? What kind of experiences will you have had by the end of 2010?

Allow your mind to paint the picture as vividly as you can - in words, pictures, sounds or feelings - whatever makes it feel most real for you. This will engage your subconscious mind, which is the best way to achieve successful results.

Write down your visualisation in the form of a letter or story, as accomplishments that have already happened. Doing so will trick your subconscious mind into believing this to be true and it will work for you day and night to make your vision match your reality.

Another major step to ensure results is the act of writing your vision down and sharing it with others. Doing so propels your subconscious mind make the commitment to reach them.

My secret weapon to ensure my goals are powerful is to write them in the form of a gratitude letter. As my coaching clients can attest, a key success principle I teach is ‘ink it, don’t just think it’. As an author and teacher I find the narrative form to be very instructive and inspiring as it makes it feel so tangible.
If you are a practical, list writer then you may prefer to use an action plan approach to defining your year ahead. Use quarterly or six month milestones and dot points outlining what you will be do and have at each project milestone along the way.

Either way, what matters is that you engage in the process of projecting your future possibility and capturing it on paper. This will give you clarity and focus.

Working backwards with the beginning in mind will ensure you don't set yourself up for failure. Many people overestimate what they can achieve when setting goals and end up with so many that they would have to work 20 hours a day, exercise for five hours a day and save 90 per cent of their earnings. Impossible!

This year instead of worrying about resolutions, focus on the evidence of the results you will have achieved by this time next year. And most of all remember, real success is not about having it all, its about being, doing and having those things that matter!