Well, another year is upon us and it’s time to decide how we are going to prosper in the New Year. Have you thought about the following year yet and what you want to accomplish…where you want to be?

So many of us approach the New Year with a whole bunch of resolutions, most of which are things we don’t want to do in the following year or bad habits we want to eliminate.

For example:

• “I’m going to quit smoking.”
• “I’m going to stop drinking.”
• “I’m not going to eat so many sweets.”
• “I’m going to stop watching so much TV.”
• “I’m not going to eat so much fast food.”

…I could go on

So, what’s my point?

Well, my point is that in order to prosper in the future, we must focus on what we want to accomplish and the good habits we want to form.

Remember, what we focus on, we attract into our lives. If we only focus on eliminating bad habits, we are still focusing on those bad habits (even if we are trying to remove them from our lives).

Instead, why not focus on what we want in our lives. Why not focus on the habits we want to form, rather than habits we want to break?

Why not put some goals down on paper that we can hold ourselves accountable to, rather than saying we are going to “stop doing this or that.”

I personally don’t make New Year’s resolutions, at least not in the traditional sense. Chad and I sit down before the end of the year and first reflect on the previous year. Then we decide where we want to be one year from now, both personally and professionally.

We write down our business goals and our personal goals. We write them down because just saying them isn’t enough. We need to physically put them on paper so we can look at them and as we progress over the coming months, hold ourselves accountable.

We are very specific as well. We write down specific numbers for our business, not just “We want to make more money in our business next year.” If we aren’t specific, then how will we know where we are going and how will we know when we get there?

How will we know what steps to take in order to ensure that we will accomplish those goals?

So what’s the difference between this type of planning and a New Year’s Resolution? A “traditional” resolution is an arbitrary change in your life effective on January 1st, nothing more.

By comparison, a solid plan based on recent history and future goals is something you can continuously work towards and hold yourself accountable to.

It’s the same personally as well. Here are a couple of examples of the New Year’s Resolutions from above and alternate goals you could set instead.

Resolution: “I’m going to stop watching so much TV.”

Goal: “I’m going to read one book a week.”

Resolution: “I’m going to stop eating so much fast food.”

Goal: “I’m going to learn to cook at least 5 new dishes a month.”

Resolution: “I’m not going to eat so many sweets.”

Goal: “I’m going to learn to make fruit smoothies and have one at least 3 times a week.”

You get the idea

Changing our mindset from what we will stop doing in our lives and focusing on our bad habits to specific things we can start doing in our lives and focusing on forming good habits can change the entire direction of our lives.

Let’s stop making “New Year’s Resolutions” and start making some solid plans and setting some goals so that we can accomplish anything and everything that we want and deserve both in our professional and personal lives!!