“Every year millions of people make new years resolutions for a “”new you”” or “”better you”” but at the same rate, millions fail to reach that goal.
But why?
In this video I explain why New Year Resolutions Don’t work and how to change this trend for the better
Hey everyone, Oz here. We’re hours away from starting a new year and saying goodbye to 2019. I could have easily posted a message wishing everyone a happy new year but I didn’t think that would do it justice unless I explain how to have a great year because most people set out to do great things at the beginning of every year. But again, most of them do not reach their goals. They don’t even remember what the goals were they set up in the beginning of the year. So you’ve been hearing a lot of conversations with friends online about setting up new year resolutions and setting big goals and achieve them and things like that. That’s why gym memberships spike up in the last week of December and the month of January. Then most people do not even show up. So that’s a problem that many people do not really talk about it.
Setting Goals
So I don’t want you to be in the same boat whether you are my student or you’re planning to be my student. I do things a little differently. So I want to make sure that everyone understands the psychology behind why we like setting goals and why we do not usually hit them. Setting goals gives us hope about the future. Human beings are social animals and the only reason that we don’t commit mass suicide is because we believe that there is a better future tomorrow. People who totally lose their belief in the future, they get very depressed. It’s just a downward spiral. Their psychology goes bad about. Most people have a positive expectation of the future. The problem with that belief is that it’s not well-defined. They just think that things will be better.
Things have been better for the past 50-60 years, right? Think about the 1940s. People went through World War II and most people thought that that was the end of the world. They thought the war would’ve never stopped. Ever since then things are improving. I understand that some things are not going great for you and things like that, but I’m looking at humanity as a whole. I know there are a lot of wars going on right now, but collectively speaking, we live longer. If you’re in United States, we’re in a very healthy position, a fortunate position versus being in another country. But that doesn’t change the fact as to why very few people succeed in business and in certain segments of versus others who are constantly displeased with what they have going on in their lives. So, that comes down to the topic of setting up goals. So obviously now we understand we set up goals to accomplish better things, so the future looks better.
Follow Through
But why do we not follow through? So we do everything. We write it down and we tell our friends and family and things like that. While February, March comes, we forget about things. How do we not forget about things? That’s the important part. So let us kind of dig deeper into that ones. First we understand that you got to set up goals because it’s not just you and me setting up goals. Even the Fortune 500 companies have goals. They have sales goals. They have sales projections. They have hiring projections. They have new product releases. They already planned for certain outages and how to deal with them. So there’s a lot of planning going on for the entire year already. Countries do planing. The U.S. has a plan for the next five years, 10 years in certain cases, certain segments of the government for the next 20 years.
So, that is our ability that animals do not have. We can plan for things ahead of time before they happen. But on an individual level, the reason we’re forget our goals and do not follow up on our goals is because they’re not tied to anything. They’re just things that you want to have. There’s a big difference between the things that you want to have versus the things that you decide to have. If you do a survey on 100 people and ask them if they want to get rich, I can tell you that probably 99 out of 100 will tell you yes. But 99 out of 100 will not get rich most likely. Why is that? Because, they just want to have it. If you just want to have something, most likely you will not get it unless you decide to have that thing.
Decision
Decision is something else. Decision comes with the information. So if you take the same 100 people and walk them through what they need to do to become a millionaire. After that, ask them if they want to go through that process, that number drops down to 20 or 30. Only that much of them are willing to go through that process. So we overly overestimate what we can do in a couple of months and under estimate what we can accomplish in the next couple of years. Our understanding of perception, when it comes to goal setting and resolutions is kind of broken, right? People want to get results of the things right away. That’s why when you’re setting up your goals, if you just have a plan to lose 50 pounds by the end of December, you say that you want that, but your mind knows that you’re not going to do it.
Why? Because, it pulls cases from your past behavior that supports that belief. Hey dude, “Like you said that you will be losing, let’s say 50 pounds. You’ve been saying that for the past five years then February comes and you don’t follow through.” So your brain doesn’t buy that story. So you have to overcome that when you’re setting up goals. That’s why we have the band [inaudible 00:05:42] structure to make it real like our members of the community. If you want to set up income goals through your business like you want to get to a certain level, you don’t start by saying, “I’m going to make $10 million.” You have the bare ass minimum, like how much do you need to have the roof over your head? You have power, to pay your bills and things like that. That could be a couple of thousand dollars.
You have to know what that amount is. You can’t run away from that. A lot of people don’t know how much they need per month to survive. Once you set that, you know that for your business to even get off the ground, your first goal is to get it up to that level, whatever that level is. Then after that you build on top of that and grow that way. That’s how projections work. A publicly-owned company doesn’t say, “Yeah, we’re going to grow 300% by the end of the year.” And there is no data to support it. Do you think investors would buy that? No way. That CEO would be fired immediately and if they’re setting up like a 15% growth, they better explain how they’re going to get there. That’s the problem with the new year resolutions. You set up this one broad blanket goal that I’ll be rich by the end of 2020 but there’s nothing to fill that.
You have to first understand where you are and clearly define which means. Does that mean making $1 million or does that mean making $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a month? I don’t know that. That’s your call, right? But if you just keep that broad, your brain doesn’t compute that because it doesn’t understand. And since it cannot validate the reality of this, it becomes a want, not a decision. If you do not decide, you cannot succeed. Because if you make a decision, you’re pushed to do some follow-up activities. Let’s say you decide to build your own business. Well then you got to do some research to find out what business to build. Then once you make a decision to build that business, then you got to make a decision to learn how to run that business, how to get clients, how to close deals, how to make money.
And then you’re going to think about, “All right, so how much money do I make per client? So then how many, how many clients do I need? How many leads do I need to get that many clients?” As you can see, it gets deeper and deeper and this is a mechanism to convince your mind that to tell your mind, “Listen, I know what I’m doing. I have a plan here to follow.” That’s why I’m a big fan of what I call the war map. The calendar that shows all 12 months. I have a giant one of them in my office actually because we lose track of time really, really fast. So if you want to hit a certain goal by June 2019 or there are a lot of people who want to quit their jobs in the next two or three months, you won’t accomplish that unless you know day by day what you’re going to be doing.
I’ll tell you that. It’s very straight forward. If your plan is to quit your job in the next 60 to 90 days and you have no idea how you’re going to do it, by the end of 90 days you will still have no idea what you’re going to do and how are we going to get there.
Set Up A Goal
So for that reason, it’s very important to set up a goal. You can start with a blanket goal saying that, “I want to make $1 million.” Perfect. Then go look up online. How much does it take for an average person to be a millionaire? Well, it takes three to five years, sometimes up to seven years with their business. How much does it take for someone to go from zero to $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a month? Sometimes as little as eight to 10 months, sometimes six months, sometimes less. So then think about where you are with that.
There are people who’ve made $1 million in 10 months. It’s not like it’s this destiny that you’re going to spend that much amount, but you got to break it down. So it’s got to come down to a science. And your question could be honest, “I don’t know how I’m going to get there.” So how do I break it down? That’s if you are not 100% sure how you are going to get there, that’s the level that you are at. So the immediate problem is you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to get there. If you have a job currently, and you’re planning to double your income by the end of 2020, jobs is the vehicle. Does that vehicle support that goal? If it doesn’t, then that means you can’t hold onto that job. You got to do something.
So it brings you back to the reality. It kind of surprised me when I go to parties and people talk about their new year’s goals and with a glass of wine, they’re like, “We’re going to grow 200% or I want to double my income.” I look at him, I’m like, “You obviously haven’t calculated anything. You can’t just say things like that without backing it up.” If you have a job and if you’re expecting your boss to triple your income in one year, some companies do that. Companies that go through a super fast growth, that’s possible if you’re in sales or anything like that. But otherwise you’ve got to sell it for a 3-5% increase. So if it doesn’t support your goal, then your resolution is broken. It will not work.
So then even if you don’t know what to do or how to get there, at least you know one thing that that job should not exist for you soon. So that’s a starting point for you to do your research. So your modifier solution could be, “I’m going to spend the entire January setting up my goals and how I’m going to double my income.” So you do a lot of research, you watch videos like this, you watch webinars and you get mentorship and things like that. So you spend a time and February comes, now you have some clarity. It’s not cloudy anymore. You have some clarity. In February, you start that business. You tell yourself, “Well, from February to March, I’m going to generate $10,000 on the side from my business. Again, this is another level of complexity you’re adding, but now we have way more clarity.
March comes and let’s say you reached $10,000. You just made $10,000 that you didn’t even know how to make that in the of January and March comes. So you see how it goes. This is how you plan. You plan for days, you plan for weeks and months and things like that. Even if you don’t know what you’re planning for, you’ve got to think like that. If you do not train your mind to think like that, it’s just another year of wishful thinking. You just set goals high up there. If it doesn’t happen, you’re like, “Oh well, next year.” As if you have unlimited amount of time on this earth, right?
So obviously I don’t want to put a negative tone on this whole new year thinking and I truly do wish everyone a happy new year. I know 2020 will be great. It’ll be better than 2019 but only if you do it properly. It wasn’t fair for me to just say happy new year and let it go. Because we’ve been spending the past two weeks having team meetings after team meetings and writing down goals and setting up a different office; planning for 2020 because that’s just how you grow. Otherwise, we can just have fun and throw parties and celebrate. Of course, you’re going to celebrate your accomplishments.
The other thing that’s really important is, don’t forget that as human beings we have very short term memory. So for that reason you have to take time with your family. I do that my family every single year and recognize the accomplishments of 2019. Just go through what you have accomplished. Little things, right? Maybe you bought a new car and maybe you were able to afford buying more clothes or maybe you were able to give more to charity. Maybe your business grew 10-20%, but we tend to forget those things and always kind of chase tomorrow.
You got to kind of count your blessings and know what specifically you’re grateful for. Maybe your mom and dad recovered from a health problem they were going through. Maybe you had a new baby. These are things worth remembering that are going to align you with your principles. Otherwise, we’re going to be unhappy creatures always chasing the next goal unless you remember why you’re doing what you’re doing every single day. Make a list of all the things that you’re grateful for that had happened. Make a list of all the people that maybe you lost in 2019 because they lived their life and they’re worth remembering. You’ve got to recognize what happened. So when you do that and keep that in mind, keep a journal of all your small accomplishments.
Because when you feel down, we’re emotional human beings. We’re usually run by our hormones, not so much our brains. So when our hormones bring us down, you’ve got to have tools that aid you to get back to that motivational state. A lot of people watch motivational videos and things like that, but one of the best ways to do that is to write down small accomplishments and keep it in a journal. My students know that I talk a great deal about this like these mole skin type of booklets. Write it down and when you’re not feeling so good about yourself or you get into an argument with your wife, husband, partner, whatever, you go through them and it boosts your morale up because it shows you how great of a person you are and your potential.
Don’t forget that our memory is very faulty. It serves us the information that we’re in the mood for. If I keep saying to myself, “Why am I fat,” my body’s going to keep bringing up the reasons. “Well, because you ate that cookie last night,” type of thing. So the quality of the questions you ask yourself determine the quality of the answers you get. Keeping a journal like this will help you remind yourself who you are and your true identity and your potential.
So spend today, I know you guys are probably doing your new year parties and things like that. We’re doing the same thing in a couple of hours. We’re going to have a house full of guests and things like that. But we’ve already done our 2000 year-end review, both in the company and also within my family. With my wife and kids, we keep talking about it, remembering things, kind of recognizing the mistakes we made and how not to repeat that and remembering to call some friends more and family members more. Stay connected with them and be an overall good person. All right, so hopefully this helps. Again, I wish and pray for a great 2020 for all of you guys and love you all. I’ll see you on the other side. Take care now and don’t forget to subscribe to my youtube channel..
