Will 2011 be Better than 2010?

As you read this there are less than 7 days remaining in the year 2010. As the year comes to an end, I wanted to ask you a few questions. If you can answer these questions honestly, you'll have have gotten off to a great start.

• How has 2010 been for you? Where does it rate among the other years of your life? Best yet? Worst ever? Why?
• Will 2011 be better? How?
• What do I need to do to make 2011 my best year yet?

Almost everyone has gone through the exercise of creating New Year's resolutions (have you ever bought a new gym membership on Jan 1st?) The question is, if they haven't worked for you, why try again? Or put another way, are New Year's resolutions a waste of time?

According to the Opinion Corporation of Princeton, NJ, 25% of people have NEVER realized a single New Year's Resolution and more than 90% have failed to achieve their resolutions at least once in their life. That might lead some to conclude that New Year's resolutions are a waste of time and doomed to failure. I don't think that's true.

If you read the data another way you see that 75% of people HAVE realized their resolutions at least once in their lives and 10% do it EVERY YEAR! If those resolutions are meaning life changes, then it is absolutely worth the effort. In fact another study sited in issue 4 (2002) of the Journal of Clinic Psychology states that people who set New Year's Resolutions are 10 TIMES more likely to attain their goals!

So clearly setting New Year's Resolutions can be a very worthwhile exercise. The question then becomes, what makes the difference between those who rarely achieve their resolutions and those special 8-10% who regularly employ New Year's resolutions to make positive changes in their lives? What can you do to ensure that you stand the best chance of success?

With some study and research, you discover three key actions that you can take to give yourself the best chance of succeeding at your New Year's Resolutions.
1. Consistent with your core values - You can not expect to realize a resolution that is inconsistent with who you are as a person. For example, someone who doesn't think money is important will have a hard time setting a New Year's resolution to gain wealth. Likewise, for someone for whom eating out a lot is important, losing 20lbs may not be a realistic resolution. So when setting resolutions ensure that the resolution matches your values. If they don't you have two choices: a) change your resolution b) change your values. Option A is certainly easier.

2. Be Exciting To You - Your resolutions have to resonate with you. They have to create feelings of excitement for you. If you aren't pumped to achieve your resolution, you have little chance of achieving them. Setting a resolution because you know it's good for you, is of little use. It's a nice idea, but that's all it will ever be. If you can't generate what Vince Pocente calls "emotional buzz" within yourself about your resolutions, they simply will not happen.

3. Create a Clear Vision of Your Future - Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve is critical for ensuring your success. You can not achieve anything if you won't now exactly what it is you're trying to do. A clear vision of what success looks like for you, is an essential part of the formula. So before you decide on what you want your resolutions to be, work on creating a clear vision of where you want your life to be in December of 2011. Then work backwards figuring out the actions you can take to get yourself from where you are to where you want to be in twelve months. Those actions should be the basis for your resolutions.

New Year's is an exciting time of year. Especially for people like me because it is the one time of the year when everyone is thinking about the things I think about all year. It is the one time of the year when most people are evaluating their lives and focusing on their future and what they want to achieve. I encourage you to use some of your time in this next week to do the same. Sit down and set some resolutions. Following the essential steps given above, you stand a great chance of succeeding.

Let me know how it goes...

Achieve Your New Year's Resolutions

I want to share a very important piece of wisdom with you: You will never accomplish anything… if you never start. There is great power in beginning. I don’t know many people who don’t have at least a few goals for themselves unfortunately; the number of those people who have actually done anything about those goals is far too small. Oh sure we think about working on our goals, we dream about achieving those goals, but we rarely do anything about them.

As New Year's 2010 starts to fade from memory, this week's article is about helping you to set and achieve some resolutions that will really make a difference in your life in the next 11 1/2 months. Over the next few weeks we'll address a few of the key steps needed to make your resolutions a reality. The first one is simply this: Get Started!

How often have you said to yourself, “I really should …”? Whether it was travel, work less, begin an exercise program, write a book, we’ve all had goals and then for one reason or another failed to achieve them. Often the reason we fail is that we can’t complete the most important step; start.

It sounds simple but in fact sometimes starting is the hardest part. It’s easy to get so overwhelmed and intimidated by the scope of what needs to be done, that you just don’t know what to do first. Another problem people encounter is that they make the mistake of thinking that action follows motivation, but there’s no reason that the opposite won’t work just as well.

The problem with waiting to be motivated before you start is sometimes you just can’t get motivated. Instead of waiting for the inspiration to start working on your goals, just start. If you get things going, motivation will follow

Action Item

First make a list of a few major goals you have for your life. Now, figure out what would be the first three steps that you’d have to take to accomplish each of these goals and write them down underneath the goal. For example, if your goal is to write a book, set aside an hour each day, to write. Take the phone off the hook, turn the TV off, and write.

Don’t get tripped up by trying to figure out what the perfect first step is. Just write something down (you can always change it if you need to). In this situation, the key isn’t what you do, just that you do something.

Goal 1

a)

b)

c)

Goal 2

a)

b)

c)

Goal 3

a)

b)

c)

What you’ve just done is create your TO DO list for your next year. You should now have nine things that you can DO today to start making your resolutions come true. Don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed by the whole project, just pick the first thing on the list and get started!

The Trials of Travel - Part 1

This week my family went of vacation, or at least that's what we thought. We arrived at our destination, but unfortunately, our bags didn't. Not the first day, or the second, or for some of us, the even the third. The airline was no help, offered no good reason for what happened, and was actually even rude.

Next, while we were there, my baby girl got the stomach flu and my wife and I spent an entire night with her vomiting every twenty minutes all night long. But that's not all... in fact, we're just getting started. My mother caught the same bug two days later and was sick for the last day and half of the vacation.

Then there's my brother's girlfriend had to leave early. She got back but after receiving her bag the night before she left, her bag wasn't there when she got back home either!

Finally, when the rest of us traveled my wife who evidently caught the same bug my Mom and daughter both had, spent most of the first leg of the flight home in the washroom and the 5hr layover was so bad that she wasn't even able to fly the rest of the way home. One would think that the airline would want to protect their passengers from a sick passenger and would gladly switch my wife's seat for a later flight... turns out that's not the case and she was told that she would have to buy a new ticket in order to fly later. Oh and by the way, there were no flights the next day.

The saga is not over yet but so far, it hasn't been a very relaxing vacation! I'll keep you posted...
Oh, and keep reading, because the reason I'm sharing this story isn't just to vent. There are lessons to be learned as well and those will come in Part 2.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

We're ten days from the end of the year and from the end of the decade. It's hard to believe, but in less than two weeks, another ten years will be gone. I don't know about you, but it seems to me like it was a few days ago we were worrying about Y2K (remember that?) and now we're getting ready to welcome 2010. So as the year comes to a close it's time for taking stock.

Ask most people about New Year's and they'll tell you that it's a time when they set new goals and look ahead to the future. While many people never bother to set goals and make plans, almost everyone engages in the exercise of setting resolutions. While I'm all in favour of setting New Year's Resolutions, this week I want to focus on someone that is most often overlooked but potentially even more important, looking back.

Looking back isn't about regrets and dwelling on our mistakes, it's about taking stock of where we've been as a way to guide us toward where we want to be. The end of a year is a great time to take stock of what you've accomplished over the past 365 days, take a deeper look at the challenges you faced, and most importantly, the lessons you've learned. In this case, we get to look back at a whole decade, so there's lots to be gleaned if we'll just take the time to look. Here is some of my lists:

2000's Accomplishments:

• Told I was going to die, faced the challenge head on without ever giving up hope
• Survived a life-saving Heart-Lung Transplant
• Took myself from zero fitness level to a marathon finish line.
• Ran 3 marathons and 4 half marathons
• Wrote and published my book
• Re-planned my life and discovered a new career path
• Started my own business
• Spoke to 50,000 people in over 100 presentations
• Met and married my wife
• Had our first child Emma
• Bought our first, and then our second house

2000's Challenges:

• Told I may die at 23
• Lived in a hospital bed for 6 months
• Broke up with my first serious girl friend
• Dealt with depression on and off throughout
• Developed anxiety disorder
• Realized I couldn't be a teacher like I'd planned

2000's Lessons Learned:

• You never lose unless you give up
• You can beat anything with enough determination, endurance and optimism
• However bad something may be, there are always lessons to be learned from it
• What doesn't kill you really does make you stronger
• Anything can be accomplished with big vision, self-confidence and dogged determination
• As long as you have family and friends nothing else much matters

I hope you enjoyed my lists, but more importantly, I hope that they encourage you to make your own. In the next ten days, set aside a little time to take inventory of where you've been this past decade. See what you learn. It can be a very helpful tool to take you to the next level in your professional and personal life.