Winning the New Year Resolution War

Have you ever set goals and failed to achieve them, especially the variety that we make after Christmas? You are in good company. Making several attempts at a goal and falling short can be demoralizing. After a while, you start to feel it is mission impossible. You learn to live with the present until you run into fresh evidence that you can actually set goals and achieve them. Y

ou meet people who did just that. You try again. Same story. You plop back to your comfort zone wondering why it does not happen to you. You give up on your goals and dreams, drown your sorrows and resign to your circumstances as you know them.

I have come a long way from where I started in virtually every area of my life. I know what it feels like to resolve to save, start saving and then a few months later, wipe out my savings. I know how it feels like to buy books, start reading and then give up after chapter 2. I know how it feels like to resolve to bite my tongue when provoked by my spouse, only to find myself lashing back in the heat of battle. For years and years, I have felt the frustration of setting goals and falling short. After a while, I joined the cynical crowd in bashing New Year Resolutions. I used to think that all you need is to set goals and go after them, bingo! I have come to realize that preparation comes first before setting forth if you want to succeed.

You can set up the game to win in 2013. All you need is a paradigm shift. Rather than look at the results you desire, look at the person you need to become in order to achieve those results. In other words, rather than work on your goals, work on yourself first. Let me explain with a simple illustration:

Imagine you want to undertake a cross-country drive across the Sahara from Lagos to Cairo. You don’t simply fuel up your car, grab some cash, and hit the road. You prepare, prepare and prepare some more. The preparation could take more than a year. You need to build a team, and get a rugged off-roader that can survive the sand dunes of the Sahara. You need metal jerry cans, a water makers, survival gear, first aid kits, satellite communication, maps, GPS, tents, etc.

You need to do a dress rehearsal, and go through desert survival training – learn all you need to learn about the route, border crossings, customs, and immigration formalities, etc, get your visas, inoculations, etc. You need to get the required documentation for each border crossing. Most of the work is in preparation. There is a whole checklist of things to do before you can consider yourself ready for the expedition across the Sahara. If you get it wrong in the preparation stage, your expedition is doomed to failure. Everything rests on proper preparation.

Imagine someone hops into a Honda Accord sedan after filling up his tank with fuel, with a wallet filled with cash, and credit/debit cards, and hits the road, aiming to achieve his New Year Resolution of driving across the Sahara from Lagos to Cairo. In the event he makes it to the Nigeria/Niger border, he will be turned back by immigration for lack of adequate papers. If he slips through the border, he may lose his way, his car engine may overheat, his tires may get stuck in the desert sand, a scorpion or frostbite may knock him out in the desert at night – there are plenty of things that will go wrong due to lack of preparation. He may return to Lagos in an ambulance after a rescue operation. That is what happens when we set goals and hit the road without adequate preparation. We plan to fail.

To achieve your goals, you have to prepare yourself before attempting them. If your goal is within your comfort zone, you do not need to do anything to achieve it – simply reach out and touch it. However, if you have a big goal, a goal that lies outside your current reality, you have to prepare before you start off. Your goal will stretch you. You cannot remain the same and achieve bigger things. If you want to lift a heavier load, you have to grow bigger muscles and learn a better technique. There are no shortcuts to sustainable results.

In our desire to get quick results, we often bypass the preparation phase and attempt something beyond the scope of our current capabilities – be it losing weight, doubling our income, developing a saving habit, becoming a more caring partner, earning a promotion or whatever it is we desire.

The challenge with preparation is that it takes time and money, but we want it now. We want to lose weight without investing time and resources in educating ourselves on the right mindset (how we see ourselves), nutrition, exercise, metabolism, body types, how to burn fat instead of sugar, and most especially what would work best for us. We feel hiring a personal trainer is a luxury. We decide to do trial and error, grabbing the first program that comes our way, losing money and time in the process without achieving results. Out of frustration, we look for a shortcut – a drink that we make us lose weight or a belt that will give us a trim tummy. Quick results R us

The same scenario plays out in saving and investing. Rather than invest in our financial education, we decide to do it ourselves, or consult “experts” we hope know what they are doing. Since we do not know our left from our right due to a lack of financial education, we allow ourselves to be bamboozled by people who are not better off financially than us. It goes on and on.

There is nothing wrong with having a New Year resolution. I started implementing my 2013 list in November. The challenge is putting the cart before the horse. Preparation comes before attempting to achieve your goal for the New Year. The key question to ask would be – who do you need to be or who do you need to become in order to achieve that goal? How do you achieve that? What knowledge and discipline do you lack? Where can you get help? Do you need a coach? What do you have to do to get ready to achieve your goal? What skills do you need to learn? What habits do you need to acquire? Who do you need to team up with, to help you develop those habits? The focus should be on you.

What is your New Year’s Resolution for 2013? Return the focus to you. Until you change, nothing will change. The old you will sabotage the new goal. To achieve a new goal, you need a new you. Spend quality time and resources on you to develop yourself to be able to achieve that goal. Invest in yourself. Read good books. According to Brian Tracy, you can reach higher by standing on the books you have read. Make 2013 the year you will invest in yourself more than ever before. You will be amazed at the results. The goals that seem like mission impossible before soon seem inevitable.