Everybody loves resolutions. They’re exciting, they’re full of possibilities, they’re motivating! But the fact is motivation fails and then those resolutions are nothing more than words written in a journal or business plan UNLESS, you tie some tremendous habits to them. That takes discipline. My father used to tell me, “Tracey, motivation is what gets you going; discipline is what keeps you going.” And I would have to say at this stage in my life I wholeheartedly concur.
I’ve reached a lot of goals in my life, most of them in my 50’s because I finally got better at letting the habits take root in my life so they became second nature. In his book, Leading Change, author John Kotter states that we often declare victory on change far too early. He maintains it takes three to ten years to change an organization’s culture from the inside out.
So how long does it take you? And what’s going to get you there? Your habits are, that’s what. Every success and failure under the sun is tied to a good or bad habit. So, if you have tremendous resolutions, you’ve got to have tremendous habits. Tremendous resolutions need people with a persuasion, penchant, proclivity and/or propensity to repeatedly engage in tremendous habits. Achieving goals is all about our frame of mind in how we go about our daily routines, how we get into the groove of our lives and go from good to greatness.
In addition to disciplined habits, you must also have focus. Without focus, you’ll get distracted by the myriad of things that enter your mind and pathway and begin to drift away from your mission. This is really where the root of the resolution comes into play because it provides a clear destination point for where you want to land. Before you take off into flight, you need to know the final destination. To help you remember how important tremendous habits are in your life I’ve come up with an acronym.
You dial it in and work the flight plan out from there. Your discipline will ensure that no matter how much turbulence, emergency landings, or diverted legs you have to take, you’ll always end up exactly where you intended to be. And that, my tremendous friends, is why goals and resolutions, paired with disciplined habits, are so essential in our lives.
