New Year Resolutions

Hi, everyone. I hope you had a really wonderful holiday season and you are getting back into the swing of things at work this week. Today I wanted to talk to you about new year's resolutions. Many of us probably made them over the last few days, and yet only 8% of us will actually keep them. And there's a lot of psychology behind why we do this and I'll weave that into the post. But first let's start with why do we even make resolutions? What it really comes down to because we all want to be better than last year. We wanna move forward. We wanna feel like we're working towards realizing our potential. And yet resolutions often have the opposite impact on us because we make them and we don't keep them. And so we end up feeling even worse and without a lot of energy to move forward.

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So I wanna share with you some unusual and yet practical strategies for making and keeping your resolutions. So the first one is don't make them. Don't make new year's resolutions. And what I mean by this is don't call them resolutions. There's a lot of negativity associated with that word because of all the history in the past of making and not keeping them. So the first step is ensuring that you can change your behavior. And to do that it's to call them something different. And so I'd suggest calling them practices. When you practice something, the word gives us the feeling and the understanding that perfection is not expected. And we can have as many do overs as we need to continue to practice being and doing in the way that we want to move forward. So the language that we use is really helpful to creating energy, because if I'm practicing something and I fall down one week on it, or I don't do it as well as I would've liked, I'm just practicing.

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I get to continue to try it again. And it becomes a more empowering and energizing way to think about it. Second, understand why you want what you want. Once you've established the practice that you want. Many of us have goals around weight or exercise, alcohol or money. And we really want you to understand what it means to you to achieve this practice or to win in this way. So if you want to increase exercise, then it's most likely because you want to be able to play a pickup basketball game with friends and family, or you wanna be able to run in the park with your kids and not get winded, or because you simply just want to live as long as you possibly can to enjoy life. Second tip that I have for you is to understand what's under why you want what you want.

And it's not simply about losing the weight or drinking less alcohol or making more money. It's most likely has something to do with some kind of a feeling that you want to experience by having achieved this practice. And so if it's exercise, then the exercise is not really about losing the weight or reducing the pounds it's or even gaining weight sometimes. It's really about, you know, how you want to show up with your kids, how you wanna show up with friends and families. Maybe you want to be able to do a pick up basketball game because it just feels good to connect with the people around you. So really understanding why you want, what you want and what feeling you are chasing will be very helpful. Third, we often set these resolutions or practices in a way in our language that is very negative and not really specific about us.

So if we say we wanna lose weight, do we wanna drink less, or we wanna exercise more. This is number one, not very specific to you, the individual, nor is it positive. So we have to flip it and reframe it in a way that incorporates our why, and then stating it in that positive way. So I will practice exercising two times per week because I'd like to have more fun playing outdoors with my kids. For example, this is a much more empowering way to think about practices instead of I will lose 20 pounds. There's no why in that. And it feels very far away. So when you practice, you get to celebrate your tiny wins because you actually did what you said you were going to do. And then it keeps going. Lastly, one of the things that is the most challenging for us that would help us practice our practices.

We've gotta set ourselves up for success. The same way we set our team members up for success. We have to create structure that we all resist that will actually allow us to achieve the win. And what that practically is, is actually not using a to-do list for your practices. Instead use your calendar. We are all busy professionals and we resist structure. Oftentimes it's because we wanna make ourselves available to others. And we feel like we're the only people that can do all the firefighting. What we forget to do though, is make ourselves available to ourselves. You deserve to reach your potential. And you know that these practices, when you reframe them, you state 'em in the positive, they will help you reach your potential. And yet you're always last on your list. Your current practice is most likely about putting everyone before you. And this is actually the practice that I would suggest you change for 2022.

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Where do you actually show up on your calendar? And what resistance do you have over that? Does that feel selfish? Does that feel arrogant? These are all things that we can reflect on that will help you put in the structure and the practices that will allow you to reach your full potential. At Intently, we work with everyone to identify what their priorities actually are and ensure that their calendars reflect those priorities through their practices and the time. Once we do that we color code everything. So you can tell a glance, if you're spending your time in a way that is aligned to what you say your priorities are and what you wanna practice. This is precisely how you move your resolutions from a to do to a it's done. If fun and new activities are your top practice for 2022, which is actually one of mine, then it goes on your calendar and you give it a special color.

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If exercising two times per week is your practice, you put it on your calendar and you give it a different color. This allows you to carve out the time for the things and people that truly matter to you and ensures that you easily and effortlessly move towards reaching your full potential. Then you must also carve out a weekly reflection meeting with yourself. This is one of the most important things, even if it's just a half an hour on your calendar, where you check in with yourself, and you look at all the practices that you said that you wanted to practice in 2022, and then you ask yourself four questions. Number one, and am I doing what I said I was going to do as it relates to my practices? It's very simple. It's just an honest account of where you are and what's going on.

Number two, if I am, what's helping me achieve this because we want you to do more of that. Do you wanna add to the practice in some way to reflect this? For instance, if limiting your dinners out during the week has really ensured that you drink less and that you have more physical activity and exercise, then continue to do more of that. Number three question to ask yourself, or the third question is what's getting in the way of actually practicing my practices. Oftentimes what gets in the way and drains our energy is our relationships either at home or at work. If we have a problem employee, or we have, you know, a challenging relationship or we're taking care of older parents or young kids, you know, these types of activities take a lot of effort and we may have less energy to try new practices.

And we have to incorporate that into our standards for ourselves. So number four, if you realize there's something getting in the way, then you ask yourself, what do I wanna do about this? How do my practices need to change to reflect my reality right now, if you determine that it's a relationship, getting in the way, move and adjust and make time for that practice. And last year when I was working on scaling Intently, I put things on hold because I had a primary relationship where it, we were in a rough spot and we needed to practice, you know, his hers and ours therapy. And we called them our board of therapist. It was tremendously helpful. And we successfully came through that rough patch as a result because our practices and our calendars were aligned to the priorities. And then I also did things like making sure that I didn't take a lot of really tough meetings after we went through therapy, right?

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Because we can get ourselves to the place where we feel overwhelmed because we can't possibly do everything. So this is the way that we can set these expectations and make sure our calendars reflect what our practices and priorities are. The most successful leaders are those whose practices are different every year, because they were able to achieve them and continue to move forward. We've, you know, we've graduated from not having his hers and ours therapy. So that's great. So I get to work on new practices in 2022. And I really want you to think about how you manage the business of you and how you dedicate your time and hold yourself accountable to those practices in a very loving and honest and realistic way. It's okay to change your practices and redefine them as new information comes in. Stay away from resolutions. They aren't always realistic. Go with the practices, create time in your calendar that allows you to really practice them. And then they will go from, to dos, to what's done as the year moves forward. I hope this was helpful to you, and please feel free to share or forward with someone that you think really needs to hear it. Have a happy new year.

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