New Years Resolutions - Setting Goals For 2020 That Won't End Up a Negative Statistic

I am excited about this podcast as we enter into a new year. Some things I have planned are:

• Many awesome guests with great stories and experiences of what living your best encore life looks like
• Having a place where listeners can go to leave voice messages that we can share on the podcast of you, the listeners of this podcast can share your encore stories, struggles, and questions.

Since we have ended our 3 session series on life planning I want to give you a few tips on making sure you get the most out of the process and life plan:

• Take a full day or two away in an uninterrupted place, away from home and work if possible to create your life plan
• Review it daily at first, weekly at a minimum
• Do a thorough review and modify accordingly at least quarterly
• Take time away, similar to what you did when you first wrote it away from familiar places with interruptions yearly to do a complete review and modify or rewrite sections that are no longer priority based on the season of your life and changes that may have occurred during the past year.

While 77 percent of people who committed to a New Year's resolution stuck to it for at least a week, research conducted by the University of Scranton reveals that only eight percent of people who make New Year's resolutions will actually fulfill those goals in a timely fashion—if ever.

According to data pulled from Google by iQuanti, the most common resolutions made in the New Year are usually centered around getting healthy or simply living life to its fullest.

Now that you have an idea or may have started or completed your life plan, you have a framework for which all goals, or New Years Resolutions should fit. Let's look at an example for the life account of physical. You may realize that you are 100 pounds beyond what your ideal weight should be. You have identified that in your life account as the current reality and have detailed your ideal weight in the envisioned future. You have made specific commitments to begin January 2nd to follow a specific diet plan and specified how you will increase your physical activity beginning now. Remember to make your specific commitments incremental and revise them in your life plan as you meet them. Now you want to make a New Years Resolution, or goal for 2020 that gets you closer to your envisioned future of being at the ideal weight. It might sound like this:

I will weight xxx (-20 lbs.) by June 1, 2020, or xxx (-80 lbs.) by December 31, 2020. You can also make longer term goals, like 3-5 years out, stating that you will weigh xxx (-100 lbs.) by December 31, 2023.

Remember from last week using the formula for creating SMART goals:

• Specific - What exactly are you committing to? Non-negotiable
• Measurable - Quantify the result
• Actionable - Must start with an action verb such as run, walk, complete, quit…
• Realistic - Must be attainable, but best if it stretches you
• Time-Bound - Must have a time period that you will commit to, such as frequency, how many, … Goals must have completed by or due date

You can find as many suggestions and resources as you can absorb on how to set and write goals. I have found that the goals I have get accomplished when I plug them into my life plan's life accounts. You need to find the strategy that makes most sense to you. We all learn and grow differently. There is a strategy that many people have found very effective using the 12 Week Year Plan. I have included a link to information about that in the show notes.

From the "Transformed Small Group Study" by Rick Warren, the question is asked "What Kind of Goal Does God Bless? Three questions to answer that are:

• Will this honor God? "We make it our goal to please him" - 2Corinthians 5:9 (NIV)
• Is the goal motivated by love? "Let love be your highest goal" -1Corinthians 14:1 (NLT)
• Will this goal require you to depend on God? "We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it" - Proverbs 16:9 (Mes)

Action Item: Write 1-3 goals that are most important for you to begin your journey to your envisioned future. Don't make a laundry list that you get lost with. Make them not only SMART but exciting for you.

Next week we are going to discuss reflecting on this past year and envisioning 2020, and I'll share some of my personal reflections on a year that has had the best and most difficult events come about, and on my entry into the encore phase of my life.

"The best way to predict the future is to create it" - Dan Miller Begin creating your best encore life in 2020. Happy New Year!

Resources:

• "Living Forward" by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy
• "This is How Many People Actually Stick to New Years Resolutions"
• "Get Perfect Vision 2020" :Dan Miller's 48 Days to the Work You Love Goal Setting Worksheet
• "The 12 Week Year"
• Transformed Small Group Study - Rick Warren
• Contact Craig