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Resolve to Never Make a New Year’s Resolution

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I hereby resolve…blah…blah…blah

The best resolution you could make in January is to not make a New Year’s Resolution. They rarely work, and tying them to the New Year nearly ensures they never will.

Last year I reported that 97% of people who make New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight actually weigh more 12 months later. New Year’s Resolutions enrich companies selling diets and ab-duction machines, but they don’t effect real change.

Later, Dude…
A New Year’s Resolution is almost always focused more on celebrating the decision than on resolving to be different. There isn’t a wit of difference between Mardi Gras and New Year’s Resolutions. Both of these “decision” mechanisms are built on putting things off until a special date where you can then celebrate the decision to start losing weight, working out, spending time with family, or giving up smoking.

Until then, you can go on pigging out, being mean, ignoring family and smoking like a chimney. Now that you’ve announced you will quit on some future date, your self-destructive behavior is actually permissible to “get it out of your system”. Mardi Gras and New Years makes your actions downright celebrated – get your glutton on, because soon you’ll be in a forsaken and tortured desert of good living.

Getting Ready to Get Ready to…
Here’s a clue – the more you need to point to January 1 as the day “I will absolutely start doing or stop doing x”, the less you probably mean it. If it’s important, change now. If you have to walk on coals or chant at your vision board to prepare for the big day, you can save yourself some self-imposed guilt and just keep going with what’s not working.

My mother passed away a few weeks ago. She used to tell me, “Chuck, there’s no such thing as excuses, there’s not even reasons, there are just priorities.” She lived that out well, making no excuses and simply doing the things she found important. She didn’t live to make decisions on special days; she just DID what she VALUED.

How to Change Something
We do what is a priority, not what we SAY is a priority. Last year I gave you three few practical suggestions on how to DO our priorities. I added a fourth this year:
1) Don’t “get motivated” Most of this walk-on-coals stuff is emotion-based and has no lasting power. You’re either committed or you aren’t. I don’t get motivated to brush my teeth. I either do it or I don’t.
2) Run toward something, not away from something. People who want to lose weight rarely lose any. “I want to stop being fat,” is running away from being fat. “I see myself living a great lifestyle,” is running toward something. Run toward a great life, not away from being fat. Read, Get a Second Planet.
3) Make decisions through a new lens. See yourself and/or your business AS IF YOU WERE ALREADY THERE. Read last years New Year’s Resolution post on how Peter Arnell went from 406 lbs to 150 lbs and stayed there. If you can’t already CLEARLY envision yourself exercising three times a week, don’t even start.
4) Diligence, not Discipline – Anybody can have the DISCIPLINE to do something for 30 days. But few people will have the DILIGENCE to continue for the rest of the year. Diligence is a drip system. Do the right thing a little bit every day – it will add up to something big down the road. Diligent rules; discipline drools.

The above four steps are all about intentionality vs. hope. Intention is the key because:

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

New Year’s Resolutions are full of emotion-based “hope”. Real decisions are full of intention and don’t need a special day or audience to be walked out into the open.

Don’t get there. Be there.
Don’t gin up the motivation to do something on a special day. Just start living the way you know will make you more successful. Today. It’s OK to cheat on your New Year’s Resolution and start it a few days before January 1. Especially if you actually want to change.

Where do you want to be in 2013? Tell the world here, be there inside today, and then let’s go do it on the outside for the whole year. Carpe Diem – seize TODAY and enjoy doing changing something that will make your life, and maybe even your checking account, richer.

Discipline will not make you successful

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The tortoise wins.

I ran a marathon 30 years ago. While training, my wife, Diane, started casually jogging with me at the end or beginning of my runs. A few weeks before the marathon she ran a half-marathon with me.

Since I had never run more than three miles, I had a five month schedule for preparing for the marathon. I was very disciplined about it, it didn’t matter if it was late at night or raining, I kept to my schedule for those five months and finished my marathon.

20 years later I was only running casually one or twice a week, sometimes less. I was able to keep my exercise going with other sports, but really didn’t have a long term commitment to running. 20 years after the marathon Diane was running four to five times a week faithfully, every week.

Discipline vs. Diligence
I had been DISCIPLINED to prepare for the marathon for five months, but Diane was DILIGENT to keep running a few miles every day, year after year. We hear a lot of talk about discipline, but diligence trumps discipline every time, and is much more desirable in growing a business that lasts.

Tony Robbins says we over estimate what we can do in a month, and greatly underestimate what we can do in a year. Diligence takes the long haul into account and sets us up for long term success. It’s about being the tortoise, not the hare. Diligence keeps us from getting distracted by each new shiny object.

Discipline is motivated by short-term goals. Diligence is motivated by long-term goals, deep values and belief systems.

Discipline is about building a habit. Diligence is about building and sustaining a life and a legacy.

Discipline is about WHAT WE DO. Diligence is about WHO WE ARE.

Things are great; things are not great; things are great…
Why are there so many peaks and valleys in businesses? Too often it’s caused by being too committed to very short term impact (discipline) and not having a good grasp on how to do anything about the long term (diligence).

The priority – the long term
Henry David Thoreau said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” In business, we get a shot at quiet desperation every time we commit to a short term shiny object that we just got excited about. Emotion and shiny objects are a great for recipe for short term shooting stars, but diligence keeps us grounded, stable, shooting for something significant with our business.

Short term goals that aren’t connected to any significant future for our business contribute to quiet desperation – moving from one short term, random, unconnected objective to another. We can look very disciplined about short term goals and never get anywhere. Longer term objectives for our business get us focused on something significant and create quiet resolve.

Investor owned and publicly traded businesses rarely get the opportunity to actually build a business on what would be good for the long term. As a privately owned business, you have the ability to build something that will make an impact for decades to come and create a great legacy by simply being diligent to make decisions that are best for your future, not just your present.

The tortoise really does win. Keep moving, plod along, never give up, stay the course – be diligent.

Diligence beats discipline every time.