Are Your New Year’s Resolutions Smart or Stupid?

It’s the first week of 2010, so one of the things really like to talk about are their New year’s resolutions. According to Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist who has tracked 3,000 people’s resolutions, 88% will fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions.

After 7 days of talking to people about what their New Year’s resolutions are I’m surprised that the success rate is even 12%.  They way most people approach making resolutions makes them seem destined to fail.  But, that does NOT have to be your fate.

5 Ways To Go From Stupid to Smart

#1.  What Are You Even Talking About?

I’ve talked to 20 or so people this week about what their resolutions are, and they ALL have failed this first test.

Most people’s resolutions are incredibly vague statements like:  “Write more letters,” “get in shape,” or “go to church more.”  When I ask, “well, what does ‘get in shape’ mean?”

I get answers like, “work out more,” “eat better,” or the classic, “I don’t know.”

If you cannot define what it means to be successful, then you can never actually be successful.  Your resolutions need to contain meaningful and specific information that defines what success is and what success is not.

For “get into shape” that could be ANYTHING – it could be bench pressing 250 pounds, it could be getting back into your size 6 dress, or anything else.  What is it to you?

For something like “work out more”, if you worked out once in 2009, will you be happy if you workout twice in 2010?  Or, like for most people, will you simply tell yourself that you should be working out more no matter how often you workout so that you always feel bad about what you are doing and then give up.

The S in SMART is for SPECIFIC:  If you can’t define it, then you won’t achieve it.

#2.  How Much Do You Want?

Again you need further information about what something like “workout more” means.  Are you going to workout three days per week?  Four days per week?

What constitutes a workout?  Do you have a specific program for success?  Is it one hour of random stuff in the gym?

You must have an objective (read “numerical”) way of determining if you have or have not succeeded.

The M in SMART is for MEASUREABLE:  If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, and you’ll never know if you are improving it for sure or not.

#3.  Is This In Your Control?

This is for resolutions like “I’m going to get my fat husband in shape.”  You can’t do that.

You can ask.  You can share your concern.  You can be supportive by throwing out all the junk and cooking better for yourself.  (My dad dropped 20lbs by accident this year just because my mom became a much better low-carb cook.)  BUT, you cannot make anyone (other than your children or employees) do anything that they don’t to do.

The A in SMART is ATTAINABLE

#4. Will You Pay That Much For It?

“I won’t eat any junk food in 2010” is something that somebody could actually do IF they defined what “junk food” was (you need a thorough working definition), and IF they had a good enough reason to follow through.

In reality, for most people, the above is destined to fail because it’s probably not worth it.  That goal is focused on behavior – the “price” to be paid, and not on the benefit.

If you weigh 300 pounds right now and you want to get down to 200, in the pursuit of that goal you might go one year without eating junk because you are so excited about being able to sit on a plane without the seat belt extender, getting rid of your ridiculously loud snoring, or no longer having people’s kids point at you  in shopping malls.

The goals and resolutions with the most juice behind them are OUTCOME oriented – they focus on the payoff, not the price.  If you know that you are working towards something amazing you can wake up early, and discipline yourself.

The R in SMART is for REALISTIC

#5.  When Will You Have It By?

“The deadline is the most important invention ever, because without nobody would have finished any other invention.”

-Dan Kennedy

For the most part New Year’s Resolutions actually have this built in – it’s a goal for one year.  “I’ll workout three times a week for one year.”

If, however, you want it sooner that one year from now, write that down.

The T is fore TIME BOUND

#6.  The BONUS Tip

Write it all down and review it at least once a week if not every single day.  It only takes 2min to review a single resolution.

Life is busy and messy and there is always more things going on than you can possibly keep up with.  If you let a week go by without reviewing what, by your own definition, is most important to you, then you will get caught up in the urgency of life and not make one ounce of progress towards anything that really matters to you.

And worst of all, if you try to do #1-5 in your head, you are doomed to fail.  You can only pay attention to 5-9 pieces of information at any given time.  Holding 5 in your head is occupying over half of your valuable metal real estate for no good reason.

Write it down or else you’ll forget your resolution and before you know it, it will be 12am, January 1st, 2011 and you’ll finally remember, “oh crap!  Last year I was supposed to workout more.  I didn’t do anything!”

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.