What makes New Year's Resolutions nearly impossible to attain.

The start of the new year generally comes with resolutions for many people.

I dislike new years resolutions.

Actually, I don’t like the mindset surrounding them. That’s because it often breeds failure and disappointment in which people really recover from.

Why?

There are many reasons, but I will highlight a few.

1. Oftentimes there is no adjustment with a resolution. People think of it as an unmoving bullseye's that must be hit dead center. There are two problems with that. The first is that the bullseye is usually the size of a dime because the “resolution is so specific and narrow. This leads to the second problem which is that the mindset is often unmovable, unchangeable, and there is no “give.”
2. Another is because it’s so narrow and small in nature, the bullseye is often missed. When that happens people often throw in the towel-immediately because it’s too narrow to hit the first go around. Instead of making smaller goals or steps to reach their target bullseye they quit, become disjected, and feel like a failure.

So how do we change that?

1. First, by remembering when you don’t hit the bullseye, most of the time they’ve still hit the target. It doesn’t mean they are a failure-not by a long shot. The target is still a win!
2. Set smaller goals on the target to help reach the bullseye. Stop expecting to hit the bullseye on the first try. There is a reason it’s so small. Hit all of the targets, one target at a time.
3. Having smaller targets along the way can help reduce the stress of reaching the bigger -yet ironically smaller-bullseye. Learning to take things one target at a time can be invaluable.

There is a reason why finally hitting the bullseye feels so exciting-because it wasn’t easy and yet it was hit.

So this new year aim for the target not inherently the bullseye. It may be surprising what the results are.