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I admit that I’m not the best person to give you tips on this because I’m not really the type to list down New Year’s resolution and stick to it. But I guess, as someone who doesn’t really stick to New Year’s resolutions, I can give you tips from my experience what worked for me.
Some would say that listing down New Year resolutions is a waste of time because it doesn’t really happen, or life gets in the way of you reaching your goals for the year. One, I disagree that it is a waste of time. From my experience, I just generally like to-do lists, and even though I don’t take a step forward from making lists, I know that there will come a time when I’ll open up this page in my notebook and I will remember, “Oh, yeah, I wanted to do this before. Maybe it’s time to do this now.”
Point two, I’m lazy and that’s exactly my problem. At the same time, there are too many thoughts and ideas in my mind that all I do is just list them down and not follow through with them. I guess, we always blame busy work schedule, or too many other excuses. I think we just skip finding out what the real problem is that’s why we can’t move forward.
In this post, let’s do problem-solving and make simple and doable action plans. Are you ready? Here we go.
Note: I believe this is the first one to mention since a lot of the things I’ll talk about I’ve learned from this mentor.
But first, I think it will help to have your list of New Year’s Resolutions ready.
Problem #1: We oversaturate ourselves with inspirational quotes and inspirational people talking about what you need to do.
Do you find yourself scrolling through Pinterest searching about inspirational quotes, or following an Instagram about inspirational quotes for your daily dose of good vibes? Do you watch too many TED talks and influencers talking about success, passion, goals, money-making, and finding happiness?
While they are indeed confidence-boosting, positive thinking, and courage-inducing, there are just too many, and what will you do then? Be inspired. To do what?
Action Plan 1A: Narrow them to a few that really matters to you, that speaks to who you are or who you want to be.
Like for me, I narrowed three life principles that I always go back to in making my goals and choices, and how I live my life. By making priorities, it’ll be easier to remember and you have something to focus on. Read separately about it in this link.
So, try and jot down at least three quotes you’d like to reflect your year of 2021. Go!
Keep in mind what works for your list of New Year’s Resolution.
Action Plan 1B: Choose just one or few mentors/person of influence and it’s totally okay to tweak to your own.
Back when I was a lost soul, I find so many online personalities teaching you how to be happy, how to harness your creativity, how to be a better person. At first, I was all nodding, amazed with all their strategies, and you just want to implement all of them. And then, I find that this personality has contradicting views to this person, even though I think they both have a point. I also find this strategy way easier to accomplish than this one.
To give an example, I have watched videos from Jay Shetty. I haven’t read any of his works, but from his videos, I find them enriching but it doesn’t really gives me the push that I needed to do something. Nas, meanwhile, I found to be inspirational at first, with his success making just 1-minute videos. In time, though, he’s geared into social problems and politics, and although it’s good to be aware, those are not my priorities.
Then there was a time when I find all of them too preachy. I just ask myself, “What am I doing with my life?” in a depressing way because I’ve been watching too many talks from successful people my age. When there’s too many voices telling you what to do, you just wish that you have at least one who will not only tell you, but guide you through it.
One day, I was probably searching for quitting your job and pursuing your passion. I found a certain Arriane Serafico who seems to be a life coach. She talks about things that I care about: passion and purpose, goal-setting, creating an online presence in Instagram, and converting these to customers for your passion project.
I’ve subscribed to her email list and I was updated when there are worksheets, when there are challenges, classes, or seminars. She has always focused on taking actions no matter how small, so you will see this reflected in the exercises that will follow. I did some challenges, and worksheets, and I have even paid for a bootcamp on pursuing your passion.
My end-goal was to create a creative business so I can quit my job as a nurse in the Philippines. I didn’t reach that goal but I pursued so many things because of those action plans that I made. I pushed myself to side hustle to make money for a long-term travel, and although my original plan of 3 months was condensed to just a month, at least I was able to push through to make that happen.
I created this website as part of that creative business goal. It wasn’t a success as well, but I’ve learned you don’t need to make things perfect, just do it in small steps [more on this later]. It was very overwhelming to make a website so when I started one, I was paralyzed when thinking about all the things that I will have to do still but keeping in mind to just do what I can now as I can tweak them later anyway, I was able to build it bit by bit.
Problem #2: We don’t analyze what type of a doer are we and the obstacles in terms of resources, environment, etc.
I always think that knowing yourself is a crucial first step before doing anything else. Are you disciplined? Are you determined (you may answer yes but to what percentage)? Are you lazy? Are you easily distracted? Are you a one-day doer? Are you a slow-burner?
In knowing what you are as a doer, you will create steps to do your New Year’s resolution tailored to your own process of achieving your goals.
This isn’t just about your personality. It can also relate to your time. So there was this tip for productivity that you create an everyday habit. However, I know that this wouldn’t work for me. I am a nurse and I work day and night shifts. My circadian rhythm in itself changes every now and then and if consistency is the key to making a habit of sleeping at 10 PM, how can I when some days, I have to be widely awake at that time?
Also, I don’t like forcing myself to do things, instead, I listen to my body. It’s a lazy person’s mantra but that’s what I am. Just like writing this post, I have been pushing myself to write this for days. I would open the computer, or the tab, or just my phone, but when words are not flowing, they are not flowing.
For example, you plan to lose weight by exercising. Will you be an active doer wherein you can push yourself to do just home exercises following YouTube videos? Or you know you’re easily distracted from stuff to do at home that going to the gym is best where you can only be focused on gym-ing? Do you have time to go to the gym? Can you afford paying for the gym?
It’s also good to analyze this to work your way around it when you think it’s not working. If you are a one-day doer, you can make a plan of activities for a day then and not doing it consistently for a few hours everyday. If you are a slow-burner, set realistic goals to when you will achieve a goal and not be depressed when you haven’t achieved it in a month.
I am a scatterbrain. It’s my day off, I wake up, and there are just too many things I want to do. I want to do sewing, I want to do crafts, I want to write, I want to make a video. So I’ve learned I get unproductive because I get too overwhelmed with what I want to do that I don’t do anything at all and just watch Netflix and eat. With that in mind, I try to pick one thing to do and just focus on that one thing. That way, I can finish at least one thing and have that crossed out in my to-do list.
Action Plan: Side by side with your 2021 goals, write down possible obstacles to reaching those goals in terms of your personality as a doer and other factors. Next to it, work out a strategy that will keep you back on track.
Problem #3: Our goals are sometimes too vague.
Be a vegan.
It’s simple, isn’t it? You just have to refrain from eating meat and meat products and voila! You achieve your goal of being a vegan. For the first days you do it but then, you can’t be really consistent with it.
As I mentioned earlier, succeeding in your goal isn’t about achieving perfection but just doing it, taking just small steps.
From nursing school, we are taught about the SMART goals. It stands for:
S Smart
M Measurable
A Achievable
R Relevant/Realistic
T Time-bound
Let’s go back to being a vegan. For example in my case, I am a meat lover and I hate vegetables. To make that switch to veganism is too much. Honestly, in real life I would alter this goal because I love my meat too much but anyway for the sake of example. So, I would start with incorporating vegetables in my meals.
I will incorporate at least half a plate of vegetables a day for a week.
Don’t you think that’s way easier to follow through?
Common resolutions are losing weight, changing your diet, exercise more, etc. Not all resolutions relate to habit-forming goals though. Sometimes, our aim is towards our identity as we strive to be better people.
I want to be a better conversationalist.
Action Plan Practice: Try making this statement SMARTer.
That goal is too broad. Again, I will emphasize analyzing yourself. For example with myself, this was my goal before and it still actually is. Doing it simply, I’ll just say talk more. But analyzing myself and my relationships, I realize it doesn’t really apply in relation to the different people in my life.
I think I’m making this complicated but here’s my example. I think I want to improve in different aspects of a conversation depending on my relationship to these certain people.
Sample 1: To my friends, I necessarily don’t have to talk more to be a better conversationalist. I am already close to my friends and with them, I have a good flow of conversation. What I want to work on here is relating to them without making it about me and because I have been aware that I do that sometimes. So with friends, my criteria for being a better talker is being conscious about the me-talk and trying to relate to what they are saying as well as be more honest in giving my opinions.
Sample 2: At work, I don’t know but I seem to be very quiet. With coworkers, my problem is that there is a fear of being branded as boring but at the same time, I also can’t relate to their conversations sometimes because they like talking current events and politics. Well, to be honest, I am regressing in this part because I mostly worked on the fear part, so overcoming that, I just didn’t care if they find me boring. I don’t attempt joining political conversations because I don’t enjoy it anyway. But for the sake of this activity, what you can do is be updated with these certain topics so you can form an opinion next time they have a conversation.
Sample 3: In terms of dating, before, I was really awkward talking to boys, maybe because I was brought up wherein there is really a divide of boys and girls. I realized it isn’t helpful in dating because boys are boys, they work on first impressions (I think). Also, I think that with the rise of dating apps, I think dating is just a big life job interview. Sometimes, a flashing resume works, but if you don’t have one, putting your best foot forward on the interview is the way to getting the job (or the guy). So in relation to dating, I figured that to be a better conversationalist means to be able to banter, exchanging ideas with whatever amount of flirting you’re comfortable with. If you’re on apps, don’t take it as hard work talking to many guys with all those varying personalities. It’s draining but enjoy the conversation and take it as a conversation practice.
Action Plan: Have a look again on your New Year’s resolutions and modify them based on SMART or personalize them specific to what goals you have in relation to that NY resolution.
I think that took more of your time more than you had expected but I hope this will help you in achieving your goals for this year.
Be brave and love the process.
Here’s a link to a crazy experiment I did years ago wherein I tried to figure out if I can be more productive if I lessen distractions like the phone and Internet in a beach setting.
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