My top 3 mistakes to avoid for successful New Year's Resolutions

As we slide into mid-January those of us who made New Year's resolutions may already find our enthusiasm waning for the new commitments we made on January 1st.

Over the last 9 years I've been helping people achieve their goals. Inevitably I've also observed what can go wrong time and time again.

Whilst we love to hate it, failure is where the gold is so today I'm sharing my top 3 mistakes to avoid when making Resolutions or any other kind of goal.

To read all 7 you can read the blog on my website here.

1. Telling yourself you’ve ‘fallen off the wagon’.

It’s week three and you’ve already missed that meditation practice/avoided that networking event/ didn’t post/didn’t speak up in that meeting/didn’t make the invitation/didn’t make the call.

At this point there’s often a shrug, a defeatist sigh and the words ‘what’s the point, I’ve fallen off the wagon, better than I just give up now’.

If this is you, I have some excellent news. You’re not on a wagon. There is no wagon. There’s also no piste (if you’re concerned you’ve gone off it).

Instead imagine you’re in a rocket ship and for one day you’ve gone 1 or 2 degrees off your original trajectory but given that you are the pilot, you get to re-direct, re-route and make a different choice tomorrow. Or next week.

Once you’ve fallen off the wagon, we often get into this ‘game over’ mentality. Stay in the game and know that your success is going to be the sum total of the cumulative choices you make over the long term.

A blip is just a blip, unless you make it something more serious.

2. Getting side-tracked by fear

As humans, our pre-occupation with protecting ourselves is something that has:

a) ensured our survival for thousands of years and b) held us back from goals and dreams…probably also for thousands of years.

We don’t need to worry about being eaten by predators anymore, but our brain is still scanning the landscape for potential threats.

Instead of fleeing a lion, we now run from failure, rejection, uncertainty, disappointment and even success (I call these the Fearful Five).

When we know we’re self-sabotaging from fear, we can make the process less overwhelming or seek professional support to dial down those fears.

What’s far more challenging, are the unconscious fears that sabotage our resolutions without us even realising it. We simply find ourselves scrolling on our phones, having successfully avoided another opportunity to be visible, telling ourselves that we were “too busy”.

If you’re aware your resolution isn’t going to plan, ask yourself: am I protecting myself? Which of the Fearful Five has snuck up on me? What I can I do to help myself overcome that fear?

3. Big dream rather than process

Maybe 2024 is the year you’ve decided to commit to a big, exciting dream. That might be running a marathon, reaching an ambitious income goal in your business, finishing an exciting project or gaining a promotion.

It’s a dream that gives you butterflies. And you know it will probably take the best part of a year (or maybe more) to get there. But you don’t mind that because this goal is SO EXCITING.

Equally, don’t clutch on too tight.

Pitfalls of the big dream

• The big dream can fuel an initial rush of unsustainable action which leads you feeling tired and demoralised further down the road. This is why gyms are so crowded in January and by the spring, normality returns.
• Our brains need shorter term, realistic and achievable goals to feel rewarded and motivated. As gross as this sounds, chunk down the big dream to shorter term goals (such as daily habits for example) that will give you the dopamine reward you need to keep you on track.
• You unwittingly create a belief of “I can only be happy when I’ve achieved this dream” because there’s too much emphasis on the end result and not enough on how to fall in love with the process of getting there.
• Your become rigid and inflexible about what the big dream should look like. Those who stay open throughout the progress respond to set-backs more creatively, are more accepting of what they cannot control and sometimes end up achieving something different or even far better than what they initially envisaged because they were open to the dream evolving and changing as they learned, grew and responded to their ever-changing environment.

By all means get excited by the big dream. Life’s too short not to. Just hold onto it lightly and focus more on the process habits that will lead you to it.

Answer this powerful question: “which habits can I do daily which would make this big dream inevitable?”

Make your goals a reality in 2024

If you want to bring your secret dream to life this year but you don't know where to start, I can help you create a clear plan to get there without the overwhelm.

Struggling with self-doubt? The good news is all my coaching programmes include releasing old, outdated emotional patterns that would sabotage your success.

If you're curious to find out more you're welcome to book in for my free Clarity Call.