Screw Your Resolutions

What? Is that really the title of this blog post. Yes, you read it right.

I got an email with this subject yesterday. It floored me. It was from a local pub and the first paragraph read, "If you're like most of us, 24 days ago you swore off booze, good food, and fun times for awhile. Well, we'd like to put you back on the right track so we've come up with a few outs..."

So this pub is giving me and you an out on our resolutions. Awesome.

The truth is that by January 25th, most people have screwed their own resolutions without help from a pub. They made the choice themselves. They were never fully committed to the resolutions to begin with. Is that true for you?

Regardless of where you stand with those "resolutions," you can make a choice today. I say screw your resolutions. Set goals instead. Start today.

New Year, New Goals?

I'm facilitating a workshop this week called, "New Year, New Goals." As I've been working on my preparation for this workshop, I've been reflecting on the fact that many of my 2012 goals are not new.

One of the interesting things about goal-setting is how many of our goals are lifetime goals. Some of my lifetime goals include honoring my marriage vow of "til death do us part," being the best mother I can be to my beautiful children, and living a healthy, active lifestyle.

Ultimately, there are two different types of goals:
1) Becoming goals
2) Having goals

Our lifetime goals tend to fall into the becoming category. These goals focus on becoming who we are called to be and fully living out our passion. Becoming goals can be extremely challenging, if not impossible, when we don't know our life's purpose. I spent many years of my life spinning my wheels because I didn't fully understand my purpose in life. Now that I do, I am committed to making daily progress toward my becoming goals, always striving to remain focused on what matters most in my life.

Our having goals are all about a one-time achievement or getting something we want. These goals are important as well. Some of us are more motivated by having goals, while others tend to focus their time and energy on becoming goals. Which strategy is best? That's not for me to determine. It depends on you and where you are on your leadership journey. Most people have a combination of both types of goals.

So is your new year filled with new goals? Will you be more focused on becoming or having?

January 10th Check-In

We are on day 10 of 2012. How's it going so far? Are you fired up and making HUGE progress toward your goals for the year? Are you filled with positive energy and enthusiasm about the year to come?

OR...

Have you not even changed your calendar over to the new year yet? Are you in complete denial that you're 10 days in to your fresh start...and not feeling so fresh? Are you still trying to figure out what your 2012 goals are...or trying to "find time" to write them down and figure out how you're going to achieve them this year?

Regardless of where you are at this very moment, the year is still young. It is a year filled with possibilities. All of your goals CAN be within your reach this year. The choice is yours. What are you waiting for?

Not so long ago you were saying "Happy New Year" to your family and friends. What are you going to do to deliver on that promise and make 2012 your happiest, healthiest, most fantastic year ever?

Change This ONE Thing and Everything Will Be Different

Today's guest blogger is Jordana Jaffe of Quarter Life Clarity.

Change this ONE thing and everything will be different!
I realized something over the past year that I want to share with you:

Your happiness is directly related to the degree that you keep the promises you make to yourself.

We become unhappy, frustrated, disappointed with ourselves when we break these promises.

We tell ourselves we're going to go to the gym.
We don't go.

We tell ourselves we're going to get up early.
We sleep in.

We tell ourselves we're going to complete the tasks on our to-do list.
We leave it untouched.

When we start breaking the promises we make to ourselves, we lose the ability to trust ourselves, and when we lose the ability to trust ourselves, our self-esteem plummets. Because how can we improve anything in our lives if we can't trust our own word?

I have struggled with this for far too long and far too often, so I know the effects it can have on your life. But if feeling disappointed, frustrated, and annoyed were enough to help us change our behavior, life would become a lot easier. What often happens instead is that we simply get used to feeling this way and continue our behavior accordingly.

The way to change your behavior is to examine WHY you're breaking your word. And from my own experiences, I've come up with a few reasons:

1. You don't want it badly enough. It's so easy to SAY we're going to do something. And yet, while it may take only a few seconds for the words to come out of your mouth, the corresponding actions that are meant to follow can be significantly more effortful. Your life right now, whether you like how it is or not, reflects what works for you most. If you say you're going to go to the gym in the morning, but you sleep late, sleeping is more of a priority for you than working out.

2. You don't plan ahead. Sometimes we tell ourselves we're going to do something and we may really want to do it, but we don't plan ahead. For example, we want to eat healthier but we don't go food shopping over the weekend and instead end up ordering in unhealthy food. Or we say that we want to go to the gym, but we only set one alarm (as opposed to a few), or we go to bed really late the night before, instead of making it a PRIORITY to get into bed earlier.

3. You're avoiding feeling uncomfortable. No one likes feeling uncomfortable. If we did, we would be able to change our lives for the better at a far faster pace than we do now. A lot of the time, we haven't done something yet - as much as we may say we WANT to - because we know that doing that one thing won't feel good AT FIRST. Essentially we're focusing more on the short-term rather than the long term. You may prefer to sleep in and not go to the gym because you don't want your body to hurt while you lift heavy weights or you don't want to experience feeling out of breath in spin class. And I get that completely. It's a matter of re-shifting your focus to the long-term effects of this behavior to realize that the discomfort you feel will only be temporary.

4. You're not being real with yourself. Sometimes we set ourselves up for disappointment by telling ourselves that we're going to do something that simply isn't realistic. There are only 24 hours in the day, and if we tell ourselves that we're going to cram in 30 hours of stuff, it just won't happen. Give yourself a challenge, but remember to be reasonable at the same time.

Start keeping your word with yourself and your life will change dramatically. This week, make a note of the promises you're making to yourself and see which ones you're keeping. For the ones that you're not, make a note of the way breaking the promise makes you feel and think about the reasons as to why you broke it in the first place.

Remember, you can do this!


Jordana Jaffe created Quarter Life Clarity to empower and help women in their 20's and 30's clarify their goals, identify their passions, and live their best and most authentic lives. Having graduated from college with an English degree and absolutely no direction beyond that, to being the founder of two successful businesses featured on NBC, in Women's Health, People StyleWatch and the New York Daily News, within only a few years, Jordana realized that success is YOURS for the taking, regardless of age or background. She believes in educating young women on the possibility of playing BIG and living full out, and has since committed herself to helping young women create the quarter lives of their dreams, whether that's figuring out your ideal career, or finding the perfect partner.

Jordana speaks on college panels, at university functions, sorority meetings, and leads her own workshops as well. To find out more or to book Jordana to come to your school or event, please email her.

Capitalize on What Comes

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” When I read this quote from Zig Ziglar, I started thinking to myself how often do I expect the best, prepare for the worst, and capitalize on what comes? Most of the time all that I do is simply hope for the best. If the outcome that I want never comes, I think of the situation as a loss.

What if I chose to capitalize on whatever the outcome is, whether it be the best or the worst? Time and time again we hear: let’s turn a negative into a positive, or let’s make light of a bad situation. This quote to me simply means let’s set a goal, let’s take action, and let’s accomplish the goal!

In SOS Leadership’s Seeds of Success program we define commitment as, “It is DONE!” You are not truly committed to anything unless you finish it. If you are truly committed to something, you are going to finish/fulfill that commitment regardless of the bumps you may encounter along the way.

The main reason we do not accomplish our goals is because when things get difficult, it is easier to give up on that goal than to continue on the road towards accomplishing it. Although, if a goal is really that easy to give up on, was it ever really worth it?

What if before starting something we did expect the best outcome, we did prepare for the worst outcome, and we did capitalize on whatever comes? If we have the best outcome, let’s take that positive energy and continue accomplishing our other goals. If we have the worst outcome, let’s capitalize on it and turn something negative into a positive and continue working towards reaching our goals.

Remember despite what the outcome is “don’t give up, don’t ever give up!” Failure is simply giving up. In 2012, I encourage you to fulfill your commitments, and capitalize on what comes!

Right Place + Right Time = Pure Luck. Notsomuch!

"WOW! That happened to you. You must have been in the right place at the right time!"

At some point in your life, someone has probably told you how lucky you were to be in the right place at the right time. Sure, every so often, we get truly lucky in life and happen to have the experience of a lifetime. But I would argue that most of our "right place at the right time" moments are not luck. Bob Hope said it best:

“I've always been in the right place and time. Of course, I steered myself there.”

The next time you find yourself in the right place at the right time, think about how you got there. Chances are you put the wheels in motion and created the circumstances. It wasn't pure luck. It was the realization of a goal.

As 2011 comes to an end, take some time to think about this year and the ways in which YOU orchestrated those memorable "right place at the right time" moments. What stands out the most?

And if you haven't had many "right place at the right time" moments this year, think about how you're going to steer yourself in 2012. Will you start the year by writing your goals down and developing action plans? Will you spend the necessary time to find clarity about your life's purpose?

Or will you just keep your fingers crossed and hope for a stroke of good luck?

Multi-Tasking is a Myth

This morning I read a fantastic article from Inc. Magazine called "7 Things Highly Productive People Do." We're all trying to figure out ways to be more productive. And some of us buy into the myth that multi-tasking is possible.

Here's what the Inc. article had to say about the topic:
"Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women)."

So now I know that trying to multi-task is actually making me stupid. Great. Surprising? Not so much. I typically feel dumber when I'm trying to do too many things at the same time. This is when important details fall through the cracks and mistakes are made. We've all been there. We reply to all and make a fool out of ourselves. We misspell "assess" in a report, and now it says "asses." It's never a good scene.

I am always annoyed when I see job descriptions that list multi-tasking as a skill they'd like a new employee to have. Yes, it is possible to do more than one thing at a time. As a mother, I absolutely know that at times my role calls for me to do several things at the same time. I'm cooking dinner, while setting the table, calling my husband to remind him to pick up milk on his way home, and supervising a brother and sister who have waged war against each other.

It is physically possible to multi-task. I can do more than one thing; I just can't do more than one thing WELL, and I often can't finish multiple things at the same time.

Essentially, people who think they're multi-tasking are good at starting things, but not always good at finishing them. Someone once told me that saying that you're multi-tasking is a "polite way of telling someone you haven’t heard a word they said." I find that to be true. Have you ever tried to multi-task during a meeting at work? When the meeting ends, you realize you have no idea what was discussed (and you pray that someone else paid attention and took notes).

Henry Ford had a great perspective on multi-tasking. He didn't find it to be a strength we should seek, but rather a weakness we should know exists. He once said, "A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once."

What do you think? Have you bought into the multi-tasking myth? What proactive steps can you take to get out of the multi-tasking cycle?

Source:
7 Things Highly Productive People Do by By Ilya Pozin, Inc. Magazine
Article Link: http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/7-things-highly-productive-people-do.html