THE year 2025, as always in January, has started with great expectations for most of us.
It is the first week of the year, greetings are exchanged and resolutions are made with great enthusiasm.
You may have resolved to waking up earlier; getting more exercise; eating healthier; not procrastinating; saving money; being kinder, and so on. Resolutions for the year are always made with enthusiasm.Some resolutions will be kept, while others will be forgotten. Some sooner, rather than later. As things settle down, and you kick back into the realities and challenges that daily life brings, many of the resolutions become hard to maintain, and will bite the dust.
In fact, Dr. Joseph J. Luciani, who has been a practicing clinical psychologist for more than forty years, and is an international bestselling author, says that almost 80% of resolutions fail by the second week of February, each year.
Why do resolutions fail?
I believe that you need to turn your resolutions into tangible goals for them to stand a fighting chance of survival. To meet your goals, you need to be sufficiently motivated. And, you need be determined enough to work on your own initiative, without needing any further direction from anyone.
To help you test your goals, juxtapose them against these four questions:
1.What were your strengths and weaknesses over the past year?
2.What new ability do you want in 2025?
3.What are you willing to do, to get the necessary knowledge for this new skill?
4.What are you willing to change in order to achieve this?
Answer these four questions, to be clear about why you picked these goals for the new year.
Now, you need to have the right plan to meet your goals.
REFRAME YOUR THOUGHTS
Start by reframing your thoughts about why you wanted these goals in the first place. "What is in it for me"? Ask this question repeatedly before you fix a goal that you want to focus on.
Your goal must be driven by a strong sense of purpose. This is fundamental for success. If you don't get this clear in your mind, at the first sign of trouble, you will abandon that goal.
BE INVESTED
Most people do not meet their objectives for the year, simply because they are not actually invested in meeting them. For example, if you decide to get fit and workout more, start by asking why. When you are clear about this, you can be sure that being fitter for your health or the way you look, is something that you are truly interested in.
If you don't feel invested in doing it, I suspect that you might only manage to not ask for a second helping of rice at your favourite banana leaf joint, once or twice, before returning back to your old ways.
FIND A COMPELLING REASON WHY
Recalibrate to focus the task at hand on the benefits it provides, instead of the annoyance or inconvenience it brings. If you are not clear and not invested in achieving a particular result, then you will only see the difficulty in what you are doing.
Life will challenge you. When you have to confront these obstacles to you achieving your goal, you need to be energised by that compelling narrative or reason that got you starting on this path. If you set your goal for the year on a whim, then you can expect it to just fizzle away.
HAVE THE RIGHT TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL
The next thing to do, is to figure out if you have the right tools that will help you achieve your goals. Skills, knowledge, mentors, family, and friends can either aid, or disrupt you.
If you have made a decision to learn something new this year, make sure you concentrate on upskilling for it. If you have decided to get fitter in 2025, you need to hang out with likeminded people. If you have resolved to gossip less, you must drop that friend or relative who cannot say anything good about anyone else.
The people who achieve the most amount success, are the ones who work on their objectives with tenacity. They have a sense of doggedness in the pursuit of their goals.
Do you have real goals for 2025?