New Year’s resolutions are a complete waste of time! You probably don’t want to hear that but you will have to admit it’s the truth…it’s the last day of February as I write and most people will have once again concluded that…

They might work for a few people but for most of us nothing really changes. For one single mum I know those resolutions made a couple of years ago have multiplies her income by five to more than six figures…and its increasing every month… so if she can surely anyone can?

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…shes a one off, so be honest, have you or anyone you know actually achieved the New Year’s resolutions that were burning so brightly on the 31st of December waiting for the kisses and the fireworks?

Actually its not all bad and she’s not the only one, surveys say about 8% do see them through to the end; so if you are one of that elite group allow me to congratulate you…and if you were just on the point of lapsing let me encourage you. Even if in previous years you have found yourself among the 90% maybe we can still do something to turn it around this time.

And even if it is too late, if you failed already, who says we have to start on Jan 1st. Every new day is a good day to change if we really want to: you could actually make a March Hare resolution tomorrow if you like, but we all have to stop making excuses. Of course most people don’t have excuses, they have excellent reasons why they didn’t manage to drop that stone in weight or stay sober or finally give up that expensive habit.

A lady told me on December 31 that she was going to read a new book every 2 weeks.. Honestly by the 3rd of January, when I asked her how was it going she already felt it would be impossible because she couldn’t even make their mind up about which book to read first. Said she was too busy on the 1st and too tired after the revelries of the holiday period on the 2nd. Maybe she will try again next year. But haven’t we all found ourselves making resolutions in years gone by just to see them lying in ruins within a few weeks?

“Yeah but 2 days Rob? You’re having a laugh.” Alright I agree, never even starting is an extreme case, and dangerous too, because if we will give up so easily on something like that then we will probably be a pushover in other areas of life as well. But don’t be too hard on my friend because so many are unable to keep up with their resolutions beyond the first few days of the year… Maybe a book a week was too big an ask, what if she had said I will read 10 pages a day and see where that takes me?

Serious studies tell us that nearly 70% of people who make New Year resolutions will have abandoned them within the first two weeks! So if you are not already in that magic 10% how do you get into it? What is the difference between those who actually achieve their goals and those who don’t? None of us set out to fail do we? We THINK we’re on the right track to reaching our goals but then something always seems to happen. John Lennon told his son in the song ‘Beautiful Boy’, “Life is what happens while your busy making other plans”

So what separates those that DO from those that Don’t? The truth is we are all creatures of Habit…and New Years Resolutions are a head on confrontation with what is probably one of our most powerful negative habits. It’s obvious really, the thing we hate most about ourselves is bound to be the accumulated results of our worst, and most deeply entrenched habits. Why else would we want that to be the thing we change on the first day of a new year. Here is the truth of it…

Successful people have success habits. However, they were not born with them, and they probably didn’t just decide to make a change one day and bingo, they were a new creation with a whole new set of habits. It doesn’t work like that. As humans we don’t like change and we are resistant to changes to our behaviour, but that doesn’t mean all efforts to change are doomed from the start. It just means we have to come at it from a different angle. Lasting change can only be achieved through the power of habits.

It is a law of nature that only a new habit can subdue and replace another habit. Bad habits are a slippery slope to certain failure so we must find a way to take on that bad habit and replace it with a new and better habit, one that will serve us and take us toward our definite major purpose in life. It is possible to fail even with well thought out “specific goals,” if we are not aware of or able to make the small changes that need to happen in order to actually achieve them. And what’s even worse, this failure to achieve goals plagues every aspect of our lives, from our relationships with friends and family, to our jobs and businesses!

So if we humans are all creatures of habit we have become what we are through the repetition of our behaviours. Actually experts tell us that more than 40% of all our daily activities are simply routines that require little conscious thought. So if we really want to create different results in your life, it’s imperative that you break bad habits and replace them with good ones.

So how do we get rid of those age-old habits? I promise to carry on with the rest of this discussion in my next blog post in a few days… For now let me give an example of how I changed years of failure into measurable success in only the first three months of 2021.

I was 65 years old in February. I have tried to make the internet work for me for years but if I am honest I have not really tried at all. I have expected a free lunch. I have usually asked my sons to handle the technology and they have obliged in the past as sons do but that meant I have never learned to do it myself and that in turn conditioned my brain to accept I never could learn.

I began to think I was too old a dog to learn this particular new trick even though I have always been a quick learner in other areas. I began to create the habit on January the First. I too had celebrations the night before like my friend who was going to read a book a fortnight. There were days when it got very late at night before I could get free. This time I was pressing through and it was not many days before I had built up a head of steam. I read the tutorials on WordPress, I watched the youtube videos, I googles my questions and worked through the answers and I am building this very site that you are reading even as I write. I wanted to build a parallel site on WIX and I have the design clear in my mind. I asked a lady called Holly and she helped me with the technology on another parallel site on WIX. You can see it at the2020Vision.co.uk…its simple but it does a job I’ve been trying to do for years.

I was learning every single day …never missed a day.

You should know that I have spent thousands over the years on courses. but now I know I didn’t need any of them. Because I am working on it every day I have created a good habit and I have replaced another habit which was hurting me, a habit of always looking for the next thing, flitting, butterflying, call it what you will.

My goal was to create interest in my Network Marketing Business where we have enjoyed a measure of success for 16 years but where we have always had to work hard to find new prospects. I will still have to work hard of course but with automated help to take up much of the heavy lifting.

We also own a renewable energy business as well as the Network Marketing thing and we are beginning to generate enquiries for that too. Its all about saving the planet and we know we will save thousands in advertising costs while we save our customers thousands in energy bills and get them wholesale prices of better safer grocery products.

I little effort has turned the lights on for this 65 year old technophobe who was wandering around in the dark for years. It’s exciting stuff, I will even stick my neck out and say it’s easy, but only if you commit to make it a habit and that means doing something every day.