Tag Archives: coaching

More on Intentions

I was talking to my banker. He shared that he took a class on intentions and learned some interesting statistics. One that 75% of people make the SAME resolution for ten years without achieving it (I haven’t found this written so am not able to cite it). I found a few more here, that only 8% were successful in achieving their goal, younger people in their 20s tend to follow through more than people over 50, and that 6 months after a resolution only 46% are still going strong. Another thing I have heard many times is that “people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions.” I have also heard that writing it down and telling someone is even more powerful.

I want you to be in that percentage of people who attain their goals. And I want you to set yourself up for success. A couple of things:

ID-100316601. Limit your goals to 3. The more you have the more unfocused you can be. Focus and succeed, you can always add more later.

2. Write them down and tell someone who you will be accountable to. Share with someone who is supportive (vs critical or doesn’t believe that you will accomplish this or anything else in  life).

3. Take a small step toward it every day. I talked about this in Intentions. A tiny step that is easy to do.

4. Don’t beat yourself up if you step away from your goal. Read more here. Recommit and move on. You can always step back on the path.

Set yourself up for success. Homework, do the above steps.

Photo curtesy of scottchan at freedigitalphotos.net

Small Changes

A recent book that I read recently that has made a huge impact on my life is, The Slight Edge. The short version is that you make small changes, that may even seem imperceptible in the grand scheme of things, on a daily basis. Every day. And he points out that often these things are easy to do and also easy not to do. By doing this over time, major change happens. And this works for something positive in life (being more social, paying off bills/debt) or something that you don’t want to happen (isolating, accruing more debt). And the other thing is that what one day seems hard will become easier the more you do it, also most likely less scary.

I think we live in a culture where instant gratification is expected. See the photo right away. Feel better right away. Get the answer right now. Which is why it can be hard to make a small change everyday where you do not see the result until much further down the road.

What is one change you want in your life? Are you willing to make one small change every day for a month and see what happens?