by Jessica Ehler

By the time this article comes out we will be into the new year. How many of you have already ditched your New Year’s Resolution? Most people, around 80 percent, will fail by February. Why is this? After years of helping people with goal setting and coming up with lofty changes myself, I have concluded that it’s either because you don’t really want it or  you came up with a great goal, but a not-so-great plan on how to execute that goal.

For all my current “failures” out there, I want to first address the crazy amount of pressure that comes with the new year and to challenge you to decide what it is you actually want. Rather, are you really willing to work hard for something you want? Is it worth the sacrifice to you? Will the outcome match the perceived expectation?

Let’s get back to my first dissection of why resolutions aren’t working for you: because you don’t really want it. I will use myself as an example. I was previously a bikini competitor prior to my loan days. I worked out religiously and stuck to my meal plan 100 percent of the time because the end result of accomplishing that goal was extremely important to me.  Fast forward to adding another baby and 15 extra pounds… I WANT to look like I did back then, very badly in fact, but it is not a priority to live that lifestyle to accomplish that goal. And that’s ok! I don’t make that my goal anymore and I don’t beat myself up for not only “failing,” but not even hardly striving.  I don’t want it badly enough; if I did, then I would do it because not only do I know that I can do anything I set my mind to, but I have also proven it many times in the past. Stop beating yourself up if you aren’t ready to put in the work; it means that you want it, but you’re not ready to want it.  One day I will care enough, but today is not that day.

So now, I’m going to switch gears a little bit. Normally I am all ra-ra ready for major growth, but this is 2021 you guys, and we cannot foresee what is in front of us. Are we going back into quarantine? Will there be a zombie apocalypse? We just don’t know, and, because of this, I’m personally giving myself a whole lot of grace when it comes to my personal expectations. Plus, as I grow, I realize that I don’t want to change me; I want to change some of my bad habits. While the New Year is a fantastic reason to start fresh, you can decide to make these changes any day of the dang week and still get the same results. So, if things haven’t been working out for you let’s sit back, reassess, and pivot.

I think the thing I have really taken away from 2020 is that a shift in thinking took what would be a really bad situation and made it better. Quarantine sucked, but I used that extra time without running around like crazy and worked out more, played more games with my family, and taught my kids how to do household chores which really was brilliant, I don’t know why I didn’t take the time to do that sooner.  Our house was feeling extra cramped with all of us there, and when you combine that with excessive heat in AZ and being trapped inside, we decided to sell our house and got one with a pool. One of my besties got a blow-up bounce house for her apartment so the kids could jump around! Instead of being stuck in our situation, we found ways to thrive while everyone around us was miserable. This isn’t saying that we haven’t had loss or heartache and stress over what is happening, but we chose to make the best out of it, and you can too. We don’t know when this will end.

If you really want to make positive change in your life, you have the ability. You just need to take your power back and decide that you CAN do it. The first thing I did was sit down and journal out the answers to the following questions.

• How have I grown in the last year?
• What am I done with (people, experiences, tasks)?
• What boundary issues have I experienced?
• How can I take better care of myself?
• What are some of my limiting beliefs?
• What would I do if I couldn’t fail?
• How would it change my life if I let my limiting beliefs go?
• What have been my negative coping mechanisms this last year?
• What can I replace those coping mechanisms with?
• What do I need to practice more or less of?

Did you just get smacked in the face with some obvious little changes you can make that would create a huge impact in your life? I definitely did! I’ve been coping with cocktails and pizza and letting realtors walk all over me damages my self esteem more than anything else. Deep down I have some serious imposter syndrome for how well we have done the last couple years. These are all things I need to work on that will benefit my life in more ways than creating some big irrelevant goal just for the sake of New Year’s that could potentially hurt me more than heal me.

Now we’ll address the second reason why your goal chasing has been unsuccessful: you came up with a great goal but aren’t executing it properly. Whenever I think of this, the saying “a goal without a plan is just a wish” comes to mind. Businesses don’t grow without direction and hustle, muscles don’t get built by sitting on your butt, and you don’t get more Zen just by reading quotes from gurus.  You can have the best idea on the planet, but if you don’t do anything, it just sits there.  If your goal is to run a 5k, but you have desk butt from doing nothing but loans last year, you’ll make it halfway around the block and quit because 5k seems so out of reach!  But if you rationalize that you are starting from scratch and need to walk before you run, you can appreciate the small milestones and keep yourself motivated.

So how do you create a goal and then execute without sabotaging it from the beginning? We make a SMART goal.

Specific – what EXACTLY do you want to achieve.  Not I want to run – I want to run a 5k.

Measurable – How much, how far?  Not “I want to lose weight,” how much weight?  10 pounds.

Achievable – you can reasonably accomplish this goal within a certain timeframe. For instance, you’ve never lost even five pounds in your life, so 50 pounds in three months is not an achievable goal.

Relevant – it aligns with your core values and life objectives.

Timely – set a realistic date.

Make sure to break your large goal into smaller ones with date deadlines.  Bringing back the 5k example, a one-month goal would be to run one mile without stopping, a two-month goal would be to do a whole 5k between running and walking and the final three-month goal would be to complete the 5k without walking or stopping.

This can be applied to anything in life, even outside of fitness, and is how I create professional goals as well. Let’s say next year you want to do 60 loans. Divide that number by 12 months and that is five loans a month.  If you close 50 percent of your applications, then that is 10 applications a month or two+ every week. When you break it down into smaller numbers, it is so much less daunting and more manageable.

Life is full of times when we can go big on our goals and then there are times when we need to scale back and protect our mental health. What if, instead of focusing on what we aren’t and trying to change ourselves, we decide to love ourselves and make relevant improvements to our lives instead of reinventing them and then hating ourselves for failing? Goals are very important for success, but only if they are the right ones that add real value to your life.