Every year people make a list of resolutions that typically last until the end of the first week in January.

Resolutions are empty promises you make to yourself and then set yourself up to fail.

You don't need resolutions.

I promise, you don't.

What you need is to know where you want to go. Some will call this, knowing your outcome. You can be wildly successful if you learn to always know your outcome in every situation.

I'll give you an example, as a busy person, it is difficult to focus when spending time with your family. Distractions like your phone and email take away your attention, and lessens your experience. Even in this situation, you have an outcome, your outcome maybe to bond with your son or daughter and spend quality time. If you remind yourself that this is your outcome, put your phone away, you will find you have a much better experience and you achieve what you ultimately are looking for.

What I challenge you to do, instead of making resolutions this year, find out what you want to accomplish overall as well in your day to day life. If you boil things down to what you want to achieve, you have a much easier job finding how to do just that.

Once you get comfortable approaching situations by clearly identifying the outcome you hope to achieve, the next step is to monitor your progress on a regular basis. Not all outcomes are immediate, if you want to lose weight you need to make regular progress and check up on how you are doing. This is the same with everything in life. Always make a habit of reviewing your progress because it is important as you may not always choose the correct outcome at first.

Things change over time, even you change. What was important to you in January, may not be in July. So not only is it important to monitor your progress, you may need to change direction. This is only possible if you keep an eye on your progress.

This all sounds great, but let's turn it into a process.

First you want to identify what you really want to achieve.

You want to make sure every day you are doing something that will help you get there. Anything, just do something.

Monitor your progress, make sure you are heading towards your outcome on a regular basis. Make sure your outcome is where you want to be, you may not get it right the first time.

Finally, be comfortable in changing your outcome if it is more inline with your desires, but don't change your outcome because it was too hard. You can almost always make some progress on any outcome, however small.

So don't make a promise to yourself you know you will break just because it is the thing to do for the new year. Identify exactly what you want, and make a plan to get there, one step at a time.

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