Go ahead, set your goals. Plan it all out. Figure out what you want to accomplish.
I will kick your goal up and down the street, all day long.
I don’t set goals anymore. I don’t set resolutions. Goals and resolutions are meant to be broken, not accomplished.
I came up with something better.
I used this method to quite smoking
Last New Year’s Eve I was thinking about what I want to change in the new year, as usual. One thing I wanted to change was smoking. I wanted to stop smoking.
I wasn’t a heavy smoker, mainly a social smoker, but in the last couple months of 2008, I found myself smoking more and more, to the point where I was smoking pretty much every day.
So I decided not to smoke any cigarettes in 2009.
It is five months later, and I haven’t had a cigarette since New Year’s Eve.
Decisions are different than goals
There is something very different about making a decision than setting a goal.
- You decide to go grocery shopping, you don’t make it a goal.
- You decide to go to work each day, it isn’t a goal.
- You decide to buy a new pair of running shoes, you don’t set a goal to do it.
The difference is that decisions get done. Goals? Maybe.
When I decide to do something, I do it, and this is fundamentally different to me than setting a goal. When I stopped smoking, I got a lot of cravings for cigarettes. The first month or so, I reaaally wanted one. I knew, however, that I had decided I wasn’t going to have one.
It didn’t matter that I wanted the cigarette, because I had decided I wasn’t going to have one, so I didn’t. After all, why would I do something I decided not to do?
Give it the Decision Test.
If you are setting a goal, you are probably setting action items to go with it.
A goal without actions to achieve the goal is going to be hard to achieve.
(It is better to figure out what kind of results you want, and then figuring out what actions are necessary to make that result happen, but I digress)
Once you have these action steps, no matter what it is, put it to the decision test. Just decide to do it. See how that feels. Once you have decided to do it, it is a part of your life. You’re going to do it, because you decided to.
You can’t fail now!
If there is something you want to accomplish, see if you can just decide to do it. If you can’t decide to do it right now, then maybe it isn’t the right time yet to make this decision. Scale it back, wait a while, and make a smaller decision.