YES! You Can Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions in 2017
SUMMARY
Did you know that statistically by January 15, 95% of all New Year’s Resolutions have already been broken!?! And yet they can be very powerful at helping you create positive change in your life.
Here are three keys to making and keeping your New Year’s Resolutions:
- Commit. When you don’t feel like it…emotions keep you where you are. Follow your commitment, not your emotions.
- Rebound. You will possibly miss a day, flake, mess up, or fail at some point. That’s life. In basketball, Coach Milson taught me “Follow your shot.” In other words, expect to make every shot, but prepare for the miss, so you can get the ball and shoot again.
- Automate. The whole point of resolutions is to make a new behavior automatic…in other words to create a new habit. The latest research says it take 66 days on average for a behavior to become automatic. That’s when your resolution has successfully stuck.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hey, there. It’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YesMasters Real Estate Success Training, and I’m here today at home. We’re just finishing up the Christmas holidays and getting ready for New Year’s. And, I hope you’re getting ready for New Year’s and hopefully enjoying the happy holidays. Most importantly, I hope you’re getting ready for an amazing 2017! Maybe this year, 2016, has been a banner year for you and you’re just looking to elevate, and accelerate, and raise the bar even more. For some of you, maybe 2016 has not been a great year, it’s been a year of struggle, or a year of loss, or a year of disappointment, or maybe a year where you just didn’t live up to your own standards, or didn’t live up to your own potential and you know it! And, you’re looking at the new year and going like, “This is my time. It’s my chance!”
There’s something very cool about a new year because it’s like starting a new game. It’s like a new opportunity that you can start from scratch and you can just hit the ground running, you can create your momentum, and no matter how bad you played last year, it’s a new year. It’s kind of like, in a way I think of it as like a basketball game. No matter how bad you did in the last game, this is a new game, it’s a new opportunity to start over. I can remember playing basketball when I was younger and I remember the games that we tended to dominate, and I can remember one tournament in particular which was probably my best tournament in my life. What I remember was the championship game, we were outmatched, we were outgunned, we were the underdogs, and I just remember us sitting there in the locker room before the game started, and we were planning it. We were just talking about how we were going to play, and we didn’t do a lot of talking, and then there was just a lot of sitting and reflecting.
We went out there and I knew in my mind that I was going to play my best game ever, that was just the commitment and we were going to come out firing, and we did. I remember getting the opening tip off and I dribbled down, made a jump shot where I was kind of turning, jumping and turning in midair, and shooting. It’s one of those, as I’m making the shot, I’m like maybe this was not the best shot to take, but I just remember feeling when I let go of the ball, it’s going in. The ball went in the hoop and that just kind of started it and created momentum for the entire game. I want your year to start that way. I want your year to start with momentum, to start out of the gates where everything is going the way … how are you going to start? How are you going to make it happen and create momentum for a great year?
I want to just share with you today three keys to how to make great New Year’s resolutions and how to keep those resolutions, and actually make them count for something. A lot of people kind of get down on the idea of New Year’s resolutions. New Year’s resolutions suck, why waste your time? “I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because nobody keeps them,” and yet the reality is New Year’s resolutions can be incredibly powerful. I want to talk about how do you make and keep great resolutions? Three keys to making and keeping great resolutions.
#1 COMMIT.
That’s the first. It is whatever you decide, “I want to do this to start the new year, these are some commitments that I’m making.” It cannot be a New Year’s wish and I think that’s what most people do. They don’t make New Year’s resolutions, they make “New Year’s wishes.”
“This year I’m going to exercise everyday, I’m going to get healthy, I’m going to do this,” and they really want it but they only want it bad enough to make a wish out of it. In other words, “I hope it goes great,” but they don’t have the true commitment that says. “This is what I have to do, I have no option, and I am committed to do it no matter what,” because what happens is you start wanting it.
Let’s just say this year you’re going to get healthy. That’s a common one, probably the number one resolution in America is people are going to eat healthier, exercise more, and so forth. I’m going to do and we start out, we’re like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do it.” We join the gym or whatever it is and then there comes day, it may be day two, it may be day five, it may be day seven, or day 14, but there comes a day when you don’t feel like it. Something comes up, something happens, and it’s like, “Ugh, I don’t feel like it!” We just don’t feel it.
At that moment, the question is, are you going to follow your feelings or are you going to follow your commitment? Here is the only way you will ever have a breakthrough in your life, is when you choose to follow your commitment rather than follow your feelings. What happens is we follow our feelings and our feelings lead us in the wrong direction when it comes to having breakthroughs, when it comes to achievement. We follow our emotions when they’re weak and we make those bad decisions. But, when we follow our commitment, the best in the world, the highest achievers are the ones who follow their commitment even when they don’t feel like it. You got to know. You got to know that if you make a resolution there’s going to come a moment when you’re not going to feel like it so you have to commit. Number one is commit. Make a diehard, I will not fail, I will not give up, I will not quit, I will not mess up, I will not let myself down commitment.
#2 REBOUND.
Number two, the second word I want to share with you is rebound. Rebound. And, here’s the reason that ones important is because even though you commit, there is a very possible likelihood that you are, at one point, going to fail in your commitment. You’re going to, whatever your resolution is, you’re going to miss it one day. You’re going to mess up, you’re going to fail, you’re going to flake, you’re going to let yourself down, you’re going to forget, and when that happens, that is probably the most critical moment of transformation. That is am I going to allow my failures to stop me or am I going to just allow the failure to pass on by, get right back up, and move right on?
I can remember my sophomore year in high school, on the basketball team, Coach Milson who was the best coach I ever had, he was the one who taught me that no matter what, when you make a shot, what’s your commitment? Your commitment is it’s always going to go in, right? But there’s going to come a time you’re going to miss the shot, and so he said, “Always follow your shot. Always follow your shot,” which means as soon as we shot, soon as I let the ball out of my hand, I was supposed to move to the basket in case I missed so that I could rebound it, get the rebound, and put it back in. I want to think of that when it comes to keeping your commitment, when it comes to keeping your New Year’s resolution, and that is always follow your shot.
Always follow your commitment. When the day comes, and you miss the shot, when you miss doing and following through what you said you were going to do. You’re not going to react like, “Oh, I missed it, ugh.” You’re moving toward the goal, toward the aim, so that when you miss, you can take the rebound, you take the missed shot, you pick it up, and you shoot it again. In other words, you just keep going. Don’t allow failures to stop you. If it’s worth committing to, it’s worth picking up after you fall down. You’re going to fall down some time, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to struggle, and you got to be willing to step in there, go for the rebound, and not quit. Keep shooting until you make it, and you’ll make it.
#3 AUTOMATE
Then number three, and here’s the real magic of New Year’s resolutions. The magic is the third word, and that’s the word automate. Automate. Make the New Year’s resolution something that happens automatically. How do you do that? By creating it and making it into a habit. How do you do that? By doing it every day until it becomes easier and more automatic to do it than it is not to do it. The latest research that we’ve seen from some of the greatest experts in the science of habit creation says [that] it takes 66 days to create a habit to the point of what they call automaticity. That it’s easier to do it than it is not to do, where it becomes automatic.
If you’ve been watching my videos or if you’re one of my coaching members, you know this year I’ve talked a lot about automaticity, about how long it takes to hard wire a habit so that it becomes automatic. This is where the victory happens with New Year’s resolutions, and that is when the resolution to create the new habit is now created and you don’t have to work at it anymore. It becomes automatic. Here’s the challenge. 66 days. That’s the challenge, is you’ve got to be willing to commit to the resolution and have the willpower to say, “I will commit and I will do it for 66 days and I will not fail, and if I do fail, I’m going to get right back on and I’m going to keep right on going until I hit that 66 days.” Until the new habit becomes automatic. Automate the resolution. Make it happen every day, until you don’t have to work at it anymore. And, willpower is no longer required to make the new behavior stick.
Here’s the rub, here’s the challenge. Statistically, and yes, this is actually a statistic. The statistics say that January 15th is the day by which 95% of all Americans who set New Year’s resolutions have already messed it up. That by January 15th, 95% of all New Year’s resolutions have already been blown, have already been tossed out the door, out the window, out with the trash, they’re already gone. Look, if you’re going to treat a New Year’s resolution that way it’s not a resolution. That’s why I call it, a New Year’s wish. A resolution means to resolve, to resolve means to make a firm commitment to an action, to a certain way of being, thinking, or doing, and that is the power of the New Year’s resolutions.
There’s some things in your life you know that could be better. There are some areas in your life where you know you could do better, where you could show up better, where you could be more powerful, more effective, more productive, more dynamic as a human being in your life, in your work, in your family, in your personal happiness. There’s some things that you know that if you made these changes, would make a huge difference. Those are the things that I’m going to challenge you to turn into your New Year’s resolutions. Resolve, commit to make those changes starting January 1st. Starting New Year’s Day know it’s going to be 66 days of work, if you’ll make those changes, and you’ll resolve and stick to it for 66 days. 66 days is an average, may take a little less time, it may take a little longer time, but what happens in about 66 days is that it’s going to all of a sudden become automatic.
When it becomes automatic, until that time, you got to be willing to rebound when you miss. You got to be willing to get back up when you fail. You’ve got to be willing to follow your commitments, and not your feelings. When you do that, everything changes and when you make the changes everything gets better. When you get better, you get happier. Here’s what you have to understand about a happy new year is that happiness is something that you’re going to create by the choices you make, and when you make those choices long enough and consistently enough it becomes the new habits that will make 2017 your best year ever. That’s my wish for you. If you like this video give it a thumbs up, also share it with other people that you know are wanting to have a banner year in 2017. Until then, get ready, make this your time to have your best year ever.