the alternative to new years' resolutions

I hear you, is the end of January already and you are tired of new year resolutions. And it makes sense, as mostly they are not really working; few weeks into the new year and you are probably already behind your same old “new” resolutions.

And there is a very simple reason why they do not actually work; is because you may know what you want but not why you wanted; as for things that we truly want we do not wait for new year, or next Monday, or any specific date to go for them, isn’t it.

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Now the fact they do not work does not mean there is nothing we can do.

This is the reason why for this year I would like to introduce a methodology that I do experience with many of my clients and which is working both on professional and personal life.

And the same methodology can be applied?in many different ways so eventually one of the ways may resonate with you. I will present 4 different formats of the approach using similar explanation.

-?????????The vision, strategy, action plan

-?????????The WHY, WHAT, HOW

-?????????The Aim, Goals, Routine

-?????????The feeling, thinking, doing

The basic methodology is something that we apply quite a lot in business, and it includes 3 steps: vision, strategy, action plan.

The vision is what is inspiring people to work with us. Our vision about our business. I also call it our WHY. Why do I do what am I doing? Why us as a company we are doing what we are doing? Apple vision is to “make the best products on earth, and to leave the world better than we found it”.

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

A vision is therefore an expression of why we are here. And that is huge, because when we know our why we can definitely find energy in that why, we find our fuel, we find our drive because that why is relevant for us. For companies, it is what may resonate with people working for those companies, for its clients, for its suppliers, for its stakeholders etc.

Now once we have a vision, and we know our why, we move into the second part that is our strategy. Or put it definitely our WHAT. What is that I do in order to reach that vision. While the why is generally a simple statement, one sentence, the what can be defined in different blocks. For example, Apple, the core elements of its strategy are:?“Innovative products.?Ease of use and sleek design giving an aesthetic appeal.?Superior experience by bundling networking and graphics, in-store experience”.

So in order to reach our vision there are precise things that will allow us to reach there.

After that the 3rd and last step is the HOW, which involves the clear detailed action plan.

Now this methodology can be applied for a longer period of time but can also be changed in a 1-year period. Which involves what is your vision for 2023 (in other words why you want to move into that specific direction). Once you know why that is relevant or important for you, you can work on the what, what is that I can do in order to achieve that why in 2023, and define the main blocks, and once we have that established to go into the how, which means clear action plans for each block.

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One can see how we can use the methodology of vision, strategy, action plan or the WHY WHAT HOW strategy for our business and our personal life, for ?longer terms of for 2023 already.

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Yet, for those who do not resonate with that we can go into a different approach. The vision is also what we call an AIM. And in our weekly podcast GrowNOW, available on any major platforms you may find more information about what an aim is.

An aim for this 2023 for a business could be to “become the preferred supplier for our clients”. Or in personal life that could be to “be in the best shape of my life”; for example. An aim is self-explanatory. I do not need to ask you why you want to be the preferred supplier, or why you want to be in the best shape.

Now providing I do have a clear aim, I can set some goals or some “how”s to achieve that. Because, as a reminder, there are many goals that can help someone reach an aim. In the same way that I keep saying there are many ways to the top of the mountains. My dear friend Ellie Gould is explaining that in a beautiful way in her podcast. To come back for the business example the goal could be to increase our sales by 25% (because that will allow us to reach that aim). Or in the personal life to run a marathon because that will allow me to be in the best shape. As one can see it may not be the only way, yet it can be a goal. We can add different goals as well, like give up sugar so I have more energy, or work with a coach to define what is my best exercise format. And so forth.

Once I have a clear aim, and a few goals that can allow me to come closer to that aim, the only thing that is remaining is the clear action, the precise daily rituals (for some the word routine may be more applicable) that allows me to reach the goals. In the previous example I can fix a daily reminder of no sugar in my calendar, run x km per day, or have a daily session with my coach. Which means that everything that I do takes me closer to my goal and to my aim. I can actually ask myself every day “this specific action that I am doing right now, how much is helping me with my goal and with my aim?”. One can see that in this way we get much closer to achieving what we want.

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Finally, for my other clients, I also translate the same methodology into feelings, thinking and doing as this may easily resonate with them.

In order to do so one may want to ask themselves how do I want to feel? How do I want to feel about my business? Or how do I want to feel about my life? When you think about it what is the main driver for us to do what we do? When I ask my clients why do you do this business they will say to be successful; to serve; to make a difference, etc. And when I ask them why is that important, they will say cos that makes me feel happy, content, satisfied, proud, feels like I matter, or I feel a sense of purpose, even to feel accepted, recognized, loved. As one can notice, what a person wants in general is to feel something. We do all that we do in order to feel happy, satisfied, content, proud, etc.

So we can move into how do I want to feel this year? maybe I want to feel loved or in love, maybe I want to feel satisfied with my business; maybe I want to feel proud about my products my services etc; hope this resonates.

Let me take another example, from working with one of my other businesses, the cooperative; one of the clear things we all want in that business is to feel useful, helping people not only to eat healthier, also to support local farmers grow and develop healthy vegetables and fruits. The way we want to feel is the equivalent of the vision on the other example. ?That is becoming a driver in both personal and business.

Once it is clear what kind of feeling we are looking for, we can think of what kind of thoughts can allow us to go there. One way to see that is to turn any problems into solutions. For example, in Romania we realized that most supermarkets do not sell Romanian products and that is cos is cheaper to bring fruits and vegetables from abroad. When we identify that as a problem one of our solutions is to help our local producers to sell their products (remember they are farmers not sales people, but we are). Opposite to that, if we think “oh no we are only a cooperative we want to sell local products but no supermarket sells our products” how would that make anyone feel? And not only that feeling is far from what we want to feel but mostly it will not move us into doing mode, cos what is the purpose of trying when we know already it will not work.

Once we identified the feelings and the thoughts that are helping us to reach those feelings, we can do something about it, we take action, because we have the energy to do so.

One may see the similarity to the strategy in the previous example, except we presented in a different way so other people could resonate more with. In the end is the same methodology presented in 4 different ways, just the approach that could work better for some situations or people differs.

I truly hope this methodology and one of its approaches is resonating with you and I look forward to hear from you how is that working in terms of results in 2023.

To your success and a beautiful new year.?