The desire to “get ahead in life” is common. The actual process of getting ahead, though, requires something different from everyone that wants to get there.
This is because everyone is starting from a different spot in life. Consequently, there’s an infinite amount of goals that can be considered forward progress for anyone wanting to get ahead. The only real requirement for something to be a personal milestone is that it’s something you’re aiming for that’s in some way better than what you already have.
When you’re young, getting ahead in life might mean gaining a sense of independence. You might want to own your own car, or your own place. When you’re in college, getting ahead in life might mean finishing your coursework and obtaining a degree. After college, getting ahead in life might mean getting a full time job. As your career unfolds, getting ahead in life might mean owning your own home and starting a family.
I was thinking about how personal goals actually change over time after I read this old journal entry of mine:
FEBRUARY 6 2003
How can they know what’s best for me if they don’t know what makes me happy?
I don’t even know what makes me happy.
I want a decent car, I want my own place, and I want someone to fall in love with me.
Teenage angst aside, it’s interesting to look back on my past thoughts, because I clearly believed that I knew exactly what I needed in order to be happy. I thought that if I could cross the next milestone of my life, then that’s all that I needed.
The thing is, I eventually got a car, and my own place, and a girlfriend — but I wasn’t satisfied. I still craved more. I had gotten ahead compared to where I used to be, but now that I had what I used to want, I was interested in different things.
In hindsight, I think my younger self is quite naive, but I feel good about the fact that I disagree with my past thoughts. This indicates that my goals have changed, and that I’m changing as a person. I would be disappointed if I looked back on old journal entries and could totally relate to them — because that would mean that my personal development was stagnating.
My point is that as you grow older, your ideas about being successful and “getting ahead in life” will continue to change. As you reach your milestones, you will replace your previous goals with new ones. This is normal, and this is good. The important part is to maintain advancement in your life, no matter what. Here’s how:
1. Have Goals
The specifics don’t matter. Having something to aim for does. Remember that your goals in life are capable of changing, the same way that your favorite movie might change every few years. You’re not a constant being, you transform into a different person with different ideas and perspectives as life goes on. That’s normal.
One of the first “goals” I remember was wanting to score 200 lines in Tetris. Later I had a goal of owning a classic car. After that I wanted to learn computer networking. Then I wanted to be a poker star. Right now my goal is to go back to school for creative writing.
Goals change. Plan some, accomplish most, but most importantly…
2. Change Your Goals As You See Fit
Maybe you think that you want to own a house before the end of the year. You’re working towards that goal when — wait a minute, your job situation has changed and you’re no longer comfortable getting a house nearby. Who knows where your next job will take you?
Changing directions is expected. It’s not necessarily a step backwards unless you let it be. Accept that you will need to work out another goal on a different path in order to get what you want, and that’s how life works sometimes.
Having goals for what your future will hold is good thinking, but remember that it’s a rough draft that may need many edits. Finally, remember to…
3. Be Progressive, and Be Patient
We’d all love to be millionaires tomorrow, but getting ahead in life is slow-going. In order to get where you want to be, you’re going to have to realize the hard work ahead of you. Staying positive in the face of adversity is challenging. Maintaining focus often seems impossible since life offers so many different distractions.
Still, it is within your control to decide what you want to be doing, and who you want to be. The first step is acknowledgment: You’re in complete control of your life. The next step is action: What’s your move?
There are two types of goals: Daily priorities, and long-term goals.
Daily priorities are routine habits like waking up when your alarm goes off, going to work, and picking up things from the corner store to make dinner. Daily priorities are the goals that you can accomplish today, and often MUST be accomplished today.
Long-term goals are the more challenging goals to achieve, since they require attention but they’re often pushed aside in favor of the daily priorities. Long-term goals are things like advancing your career, paying off debt, saving for retirement, learning a foreign language, or any other goal that can’t be done in just one day.
Although you can easily lose sight of long-term goals in favor of daily priorities, long-term goals are ever-present. They loom in the back of your mind until another year passes, when you realize you’re no further along in achieving them. Once they’re on your mind, your long-term goals seem neglected, as if to say “Did you forget about me? Aren’t I what you really want to be doing?”
I recently read a book that is helping me keep my long-term goals in the forefront of my mind, so that I can make conscious efforts to work towards them on a regular basis. Put another way, I’ve learned some methods for working your long-term goals into your daily routine.
Last year, Jason Harvey sent me a copy of his book “Achieve Anything In Just One Year: Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals.”
Achieve Anything appealed to me because it suggested a theme of gradual progression towards accomplishment. Additionally, I have many goals that I’m determined to achieve, but I often struggle when it comes to getting organized and finding time for all of them. Harvey’s book helps with all of this and more.
The format of Achieve Anything is simple: There are 365 pages corresponding each day of the year. The intention is to invest about 5 minutes per day reading just one page. The day’s page will contain an inspiring quote, a description of where you’re likely to be on the path to your goals, and some advice for how to keep advancing towards them.
For example, Achieve Anything begins with “Day 1” where Harvey admits that he has no proof that this book will change your life. Consequently, your first assignment will be an act of faith.
The first assignment is a simple task: get a notebook. You’ll use it to document your progress towards your goals, and you’re instructed to carry it with you wherever you go. When you think of something that you want — one of “your dreams” — it is important to record that dream in your notebook, regardless of how seemingly impossible it may be.
Day 1’s assignment was a teaser, but I was intrigued enough to bite. I drove to my local Border’s and picked out a small notebook that fit in my pocket, so that I could take it wherever I went. Here is my journal entry from the first day:
I started reading a book called “How to Accomplish Anything in One Year,” but I didn’t get very far. You have to read one page a day, and each day has a homework assignment. Today’s assignment was to buy a notebook and write down my dreams in it. It’s supposed to be a journal that I take with me everywhere, so I went with this small moleskine. Let’s hope it’s large enough to hold all of my dreams.
I dream about winning the lottery. I dream about having a job that I love to do everyday. I dream about owning my own house. In this house I have my own personal arcade with pinball machines, Donkey Kong, and even a bowling lane. I dream about being a concert pianist capable of sight reading music. I dream about surfing frequently for the enjoyment. I dream about publishing my own book, and being able to earn a wonderful living off of my craft. I dream about having a muscular body. I desperately want to stay on track to getting down to 160, but still have over 15 pounds to lose. I dream about having more confidence. I dream about having enough money constantly coming in that I never need to worry about the amount that I’m spending. I dream about being happier more often. I dream about not being a peon worker on the front lines being steamrolled by angry customers every day. I dream about being able to dance like a champ, so that I can impress everyone on the dance floor with my awesome moves. I dream of never needing to answer to anybody else that’s telling me what to do or how to live my life. I dream about being a great success doing what I love.
There, I wrote down my dreams. Or at least the ones on my mind tonight.
I’m supposed to carry this with me everywhere for at least a week. It’s supposed to be an act of faith for this book I’m starting to read.
I don’t know how I feel about the book, but I know that I feel like something about my life needs to change.
I’m tired of wanting more. I want to start being the person I always hoped to be.
Looking back on it, I had a lot of initial skepticism, but found the act of writing down what was on my mind to be incredibly therapeutic. Furthermore, writing down my goals gave form to my feelings, and made them much more real.
Another day’s assignment was about self-assessment. I was tasked with writing three sentences that define me, and I felt challenged by this request since I don’t like trying to “summarize” who I am. I imagined that describing an entire human being’s purpose, existence, and self in a single paragraph was just impossible. Still, I wrote it out:
I am a guy who craves more out of life. I strive towards a life that’s completely happy and content, but I often face obstacles that make my “perfect life” seem very far away. My biggest obstacle is fear, and yet my biggest fear is a life wasted.
I’m not certain how the paragraph above will sound to anyone else, but to me it’s “Shaun Boyd in a nutshell.” When you’re given limits as to how much you can say in a self-assessment, the truly important points shine through, and the result is quite profound.
Achieve Anything has you write out many different things as the days progress, but they all involve introspection: Five things you like about yourself. Five things you’d like to change. Five things about your life that make you feel successful and proud, etc. As time goes on, you’re tasked with going back to these previous entries you’ve written and choosing more specific things that you want to delve into deeper.
One of my goals involves advancing my skills as a piano player. There was one song in particular that I wanted to learn for several years, but I was seemingly incapable of learning: “Come Sail Away” by Styx.
Before reading Achieve Anything I was trapped in a cycle: I’d watch videos of other people on Youtube playing the song I wanted to be playing. I’d feel envious of their musical abilities and believe that my own skills paled in comparison. My girlfriend always made fun of me, saying that if I spent the amount of time practicing that I spent watching others play this piece, that I’d know it by now.
The thing is, I was doing it wrong. I was constantly searching the internet for shortcuts, watching people who knew how to play this piece over and over again to see if I could simply mimic their actions to learn this single song. I would call up tutorial videos and repeatedly rewind the video while at the keyboard hoping that I could jump right in to this song that was far above my skill level. It never worked.
Achieve Anything helped me understand how I needed to deconstruct this goal in order to accomplish it. In other words, before I could learn Come Sail Away, I needed to learn how to read sheet music. Having already tried this on my own unsuccessfully, I knew that I would need help. So before I could read sheet music, I needed to find a piano teacher. I found a local instructor who helped me with my sight-reading ability, but even then I learned how deconstruction played an important role in learning a music piece:
Come Sail Away is not a song that is intended to be learned in one session. Similar to long term goals, sheet music is broken down into smaller steps. In music, these smaller sections of the piece are called “measures,” and these measures are then broken down into smaller “notes.”
I’d play individual measures over and over, and would need to break them down into two different melodies: the left-hand and the right-hand. These separate melodies were mastered individually, which required strategic finger-placement to play efficiently so that I could maintain the tempo when I was finally ready to combine hands.
The lesson here is that there are no shortcuts. If I were to have skipped all of these steps and pushed forward by mimicking the way others played the piece and memorizing their finger positions, I’d have only been hurting myself in the long run. Although I might have been able to learn Come Sail Away using this “mimic strategy,” once I finally did, it would be the ONLY music piece that I learned.
Choosing to learn Come Sail Away using the sheet music, by breaking down the piece into small, achievable sections is a strategy that can be applied to any song. It has given me the confidence that if I wanted to play any piece of music, I could learn it by applying the same deconstruction concepts and putting in the time.
For your enjoyment, here is a clip of me playing Come Sail Away (single take):
Granted, learning to play the piano is only one of my long-term goals. It is not the only goal that Achieve Anything is helping me work towards — it is just a good example of real progress that can be easily demonstrated. There are many other long-term goals I’m working on simultaneously, and the strategies offered in Achieve Anything apply for all of them. The most important point, really, is to be aware of your goals, and don’t forget about them.
Which brings me to my only complaint about Achieve Anything: If read as intended, it will take you an entire year to finish. During this time, it will smugly sit next to your bedside, acting as a gentle reminder that if you’re going to succeed in accomplishing the goals you’ve set out for yourself, that you must work towards them vigilantly. On those inevitable nights when I was too drained by the daily grind, when I wanted nothing more than to escape into a good novel, Achieve Anything seemed to call to me from my bedside table, almost mockingly, as if to say “Tsk-tsk.”
With this in mind, what long-term goals are you working towards, and what are your strategies for sticking with them?
It was the best feeling in the world. I felt so good that night that my soul, it seemed to fly around that night as I flew that night.
— Keller Williams, Best Feeling
I love it when people read things that I’ve written. I don’t always know when that’s happening, but I like imagining that it’s happening often. Consequently, I get super excited whenever someone sends me a message saying “Hey Shaun, I read this, and it’s good!”
Whenever someone takes the time to tell me that something I’ve written has had a positive effect on them, I feel proud. It makes me feel great knowing that what I’m writing is not only being read by others, but that it’s influencing how they live their lives. To me, there’s no better feeling. I write back saying “Hey thanks for letting me know!” and then proceed to print out their message and hang it up in my office.
I do this because the feeling that I get when I read these messages is so encouraging, that I want to make sure I save it so that I can re-read it again. Whenever I’m unsure if what I’m writing is worthwhile, I convince myself that it must be considering everyone’s positive reactions. Here are some examples of the messages people have sent me that are hanging on my wall:
Your articles are inspiring and encouraging to me. Just thought I’d let you know that I believe you are touching the lives of other people in an amazing way. I’m not sure if that is a goal of yours as a writer, but if it isn’t it is something you can add to the list and check off as accomplished. Thank you for your advice and life lessons, they are well taught.
Short, sweet, and very kind. Still, despite being relatively short, I can’t help but think that somebody took the time out of their lives to reach out and say “What you’re doing is great.” I appreciate it. Here’s another:
I’ve never written a fan letter, but your blog has filled me with a sense of joy and relief these last two days and I’d like to send a little gratitude your way. I discovered your blog yesterday by googling something like “work despair” (wait, I actually googled “to quit or not to quit”), just to see what I’d find and perhaps alleviate some work-related boredom (and yes, despair). What I found is a blog that has provided me with encouragement and logical steps to improving my life.
Yesterday I not only learned that you overcame a fear of the unknown and a job that was not providing you with a sense of fulfillment, but I read how you achieved your goals (oh, and I learned that it’s important to actually set goals). I also read about how you moved past a gambling addiction (I’m in AA, so I relate in my own way), moved far from home to live with Cassie — not knowing if that would be one of those stereotypical ill-fated decisions that we so often make for love. Today I found out that Cassie was diagnosed with cancer, but has successfully come out the other side, which was celebrated with what looked like a blast of a cruise (I’m not the cruise type, so it’s amazing how much I enjoyed seeing your experience). Your writing has quickly endeared yourself to me almost as though I’ve known you for years. I guess I just wanted to let you know that I love your straightforward and charming writing, as well as your ability to impart a simple joie de vivre on this reader.
She loves my writing and finds my stories endearing. My god, how will I ever fit through my front door with the big head that she’s given me! Finally, here is a man who told me his life’s story, after I thanked him for donating to LifeReboot:
I should be thanking you.
Over two years ago I came across your article “10 Reasons It Doesn’t Pay to be the Computer Guy.” I felt as though I was reading something I had written myself, it was that dead on accurate for me. I remember printing it out and sticking it on the wall of my tiny 1 bedroom apartment. Reading about your history I see a lot of myself in you. We are around the same age and I too grew up involved in computers and technology. I was always the “computer guy” and I loved it as a hobby. Everyone (including me) naturally assumed that it was my course in life to pursue a career in that field.
Specifically I wanted to be involved in Network Administration. I had learned a lot from my home network and even involved myself in my high school’s network, doing system upgrades, managing switches, AD migration, etc. It was my dream to have a job in this field and I had such high expectations of how great it would be.
Fast forward a few years later, I had that job and I was the sole network admin for a government agency department of 75 users. It was great for the first few months but after a couple years working there, like you, I had run out of new or interesting things to learn. On top of that, every single item on your list of 10 things was eating at the core of my soul. My relationships with “friends” and co-workers only revolved around me supporting their computer issues. It was the same nonsense day in and day out. I know you understand what I mean. Even though everyone there loved me and I had received a promotion & pay raise, I was still miserable.
Then one day I came across your article. I remember thinking how this was my exact same situation. It started a spark of thought in my mind. I remember thinking that perhaps this life of the “computer guy” was not for me. So I secretly developed a plan to “reboot” my life, like you call it. I told absolutely no one of my intentions, because I did not want anyone to try and dissuade me from what I wanted to do. 3 months later the big day came and I walked into my boss’s office and handed in my letter of resignation. He was in absolute shock. When I got home I handed in my notice of intention to vacate my apartment. I packed my things, got in my car, and moved out of the city and into a place in the country where I always wanted to live. I had pulled the trigger and rebooted my life. When family, friends, and co-workers found out about this they went nuts. My whole life had revolved around other people’s opinions of me and what I did, like you, was influenced by their opinions. Not this time…
Fast forward to today. I’ve put my “computer guy” past behind me and I’m enjoying my new life. I redirected my computer talents into a field where I did not have to deal with any “users” or provide support: Internet Marketing. I’ve done really well and in 2009 I bought my first house and even my dream car. Most of all I’m living the kind of life I want to live and working from home. I’m really glad I listened to myself for a change and took the huge risk to reboot my life.
The reason I sent you that donation yesterday was because it was the 2 year anniversary of my “life reboot.” Yesterday when I noticed the date I started reflecting on this event. I remember your article and how it had started the change in my thinking, so I jumped on google and found your site. I re-read your material and some new stuff, saw the donation button and figured, boy does this guy deserve a donation. I hope you can use it for something good.
I really hope you do pursue your career as a writer. I can tell you that your article really had an impact on my life and changed it for the better. Good luck to you in the future and thanks for much for doing what you do!
According to this reader, I sparked an enormous change in his life! It’s unbelievable!
Reading through all of these positive messages puts me in a mindset that’s hard to describe. It’s a powerful feeling that is a blend of being happy, being content, and being overwhelmed with joy. Put simply, there’s no better feeling than knowing that what I’m doing matters. It makes me proud to get confirmation that what I’m doing is having an impact.
With this in mind, I want to take this opportunity to thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Thanks for everything.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for commenting. Thanks for sending me messages describing how the things I’m writing are having an impact on your life. Thanks for the encouragement. Thanks for the donations and support. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for sharing what I’ve written with others. Thanks for linking to me. Thanks for offering to write guest post for LifeReboot, or for asking me to write a guest post in your blog. Thanks for giving my writings meaning.
Thanks for making the time that I’ve invested here time well spent — it makes the process more rewarding, and the task worth doing. Thank you for helping to inspire me to keep writing. You’ve caused me to create something much bigger than me, and for that I am truly grateful.
Thanks, everyone, again. Thanks for making my day every time I think about how people want to read what I’ve written — it really is the best feeling in the world.
So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.
— Peter Gibbons, Office Space
I recently read Audrey B. LeGrand’s How To Get Out of Job Jail: Eight Ways to Have the Career You’ve Always Wanted. I was immediately attracted to her book due to its title. The concept of “Job Jail” really resonated with me, because ever since I entered the work force, I’ve felt trapped.
According to LeGrand, there are many reasons why you might be in Job Jail. You want to change career fields, but potential employers believe that you’re over- or under-qualified. You want to get promoted, but your position doesn’t give you the right opportunities or necessary skills to truly advance. You want to do work that’s more rewarding to you, but you’ve taken your career to the point where you can’t afford to walk away from it.
No matter which situation you might be in, the underlying feeling is the same: helplessness. You’re unsatisfied with where you are. You know that you’re unhappy. You believe that you have no control over it. This is Job Jail.
Being in Job Jail means that someone else is in control of your future. Getting out requires you to regain that control. LeGrand spends eight chapters identifying areas of personal improvement that will help you eliminate the feeling of helplessness, regain control of your career path, and ultimately “break out” of Job Jail.
The book begins with an introduction questionnaire. It’s designed to determine if you’re on the right career path, or if you’re in Job Jail. At first I believed that this “Job Jail Quiz” was unnecessary, because surely anyone wanting to read a book entitled How To Get Out of Job Jail must believe that they are already in it!
After taking the quiz, though, I realized that taking the time to answer these questions really sets the tone for the book. It gets you thinking about whether or not you do your work with enthusiasm. It makes you wonder if the only reason you’re doing this job is because it’s comfortable. It causes you to see if you love talking to people about your job, or if you’d rather talk about something else instead.
In short, the intro helps determine where you stand. It causes you to recognize that you’re unsatisfied, makes you acknowledge that something needs to change, and effectively asks “Now what are you going to do about it?”
For me, it quickly became clear that I must rewrite my resume. As a writer, I tend to be long-winded when providing my work history. Consequently, my resume includes every last detail of my job responsibilities, regardless of how unnecessary those details may be.
LeGrand states that a well-crafted resume will successfully summarize your accomplishments in a quick glance. She uses the acronym CARS to help you remember to hit the important points of your job accomplishments, while still being concise:
Challenge: The problem that sparked the need for action
Action: What you did in response to the problem
Result: The consequence of your action
Scope: The impact of your result on the business
A successful resume will combine these points consistently, giving the impression that you are a resource person who can provide creative solutions to professional challenges. An example of a job description using CARS might be:
Developed an Internet Content Filter using Free Software that fully replaced a malfunctioning Subscription Product. The Free Content Filter is being used by all 200 staff members across nine Library Branches, and saves the Library System $30,000 annually.
Although the chapter on resumes was thoroughly informative, I didn’t find all of the chapters in How To Get Out of Job Jail to be equally helpful. One topic I was especially interested in was Entrepreneurial Skills. Sadly, the chapter dedicated to this topic was only eight paragraphs long. It had a questionnaire that basically said “If you answered ‘Yes’ to most of these then you’d do well as an entrepreneur.”
The lack of follow-through on the subject was disappointing, because entrepreneurs already know that they have an innate desire to carve their own path. Entrepreneurs are looking for far more than this acknowledgment — we want the details on how to harness our craft and get started, so that we can succeed in creating and maintaining our own business.
That being said, I don’t mean to dismiss the value of the book entirely. I simply want to emphasize that mileage will vary.
Put another way, reading How To Get Out of Job Jail (or any self-help book for that matter) is not a solution to your dead-end job situation. It is a collection of guidelines that can help you along in your quest to escape from it. Ultimately, the work required to create positive change in your life is left for you to do.
Which brings us to an interesting point: The only thing that separates us from our dream job is the “in-between” work.
Maybe you need to rewrite your resume. Maybe you need to take night classes to gain additional education or qualifications. Maybe you need to focus on your presentation, interview, or communication skills. Although we already know what must be done, we choose to invest our energy into other things. We often don’t want to do the “in-between” work that will affect career enhancement, as we would rather distract ourselves with things that are more fun.
As already indicated, mileage will vary because every self-help reader is in a different spot with a different perspective. I’m grateful for having read How To Get Out of Job Jail because I now realize that my resume sucks. I instinctively want to write an autobiography, but my resume needs to be a snapshot of my most important accomplishments.
In the end, it’s a book that can help you sort out what you might be doing wrong, or what you haven’t been doing at all. Like most self-help books, if you read it, it will at least get you thinking about the next steps for improving your life.
For me, LifeReboot has been an experiment in entrepreneurship. I liken the task of writing in my blog to “building an escape hatch” with which I can escape from Job Jail. I earn a bit of money from LifeReboot, and over the years it has earned progressively more. Perhaps eventually it will earn enough to allow me to write in it full-time, and permit me to leave my soul-crushing day-job. In the meantime, I’m opening my mind to other strategies for escaping Job Jail.
So tell me — are you underemployed, or trapped in a career field you can’t stand? Do you have any plans for escape? And for those of you who have managed to escape already: How did you do it? Please leave your experiences in the comments!
At the start of every year we get excited about how this year, we’re really going to follow through on our New Year’s Resolutions. We make plans to get in shape, quit smoking, get out of debt, and floss daily. We look forward to getting to bed early, getting up early, and taking advantage of every moment of every day so that we can fully accomplish our goals.
After only a few months, though, our initial burst of enthusiasm is often replaced our old, bad habits. We start to give ourselves excuses as to why we can break our resolutions:
“We had a hard day at work, so we’ll spend this evening in front of the TV decompressing. The gym can wait until the weekend.” — “We had a stressful week, so we deserve one cigarette. We’ll go back to quitting after this last one.” — “We’re bored, so let’s go spend money. The budget we wrote up is only a guideline, it’s not the law.”
I’m confident that we’ve all fallen victim to this pattern. We know what it is that we want to accomplish, but maintaining these new habits is challenging because it involves a change in routine. Here are three strategies that I use to form good habits:
1. Start Small
Perhaps the worst thing that you can do is task yourself with multiple difficult goals, and try to start them at all once. You want to ease yourself into the new habits gradually, so that they actually become habits that stick. Furthermore, you might start with a single, simple habit and work your way up.
For example, one habit that I couldn’t break for 20 years was to stop sleeping in. Multiple alarms didn’t work. Putting my alarm clock on the other side of the room didn’t work. No matter what fancy alarm clock I tried, I would still sleep in until the last possible moment.
The thing that finally taught me how to wake up when my alarm went off? Practice! I spent half an hour one night repeatedly getting out of bed when my alarm sounded, trying to re-train my brain. The next morning, I got up right away!
After successfully forming this good habit, I was incredibly encouraged! I had been sleeping in for my entire life. Conquering this bad habit always seemed impossible — but now that I knew change was possible, I wanted to form even more good habits!
2. Have a Plan
Some people say it takes 21 days to form a new habit. Others say 30 days. Personally, it takes me maybe 90 days before I’m convinced that something I’m doing is officially part of my routine.
If your goal requires a serious time commitment, it’s best to have set days and/or set times for when you’ll be working towards your goal. In other words, it’s best to have a plan!
When my girlfriend and I started going to the gym this year, our trainer recommended that we go three times a week: One day for upper body, one day for lower body, and one day for circuit training.
Although Cassie wanted to be flexible about which days we went (picking and choosing based on convenience and interest), I suggested that we plan on going Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays. As a result, we now have dedicated “gym days” where we know that we must go, regardless of how we feel about it. Consequently, we’ll go even when it’s not particularly convenient, and even when we might not want to.
We’ve effectively replaced a bad habit (watching TV every night) with a good one (attending the gym thrice a week). At the time of this writing, we’ve been to the gym 25 times since we signed up at the start of 2011 — racking up nearly 40 hours of time spent working out! It’s thrilling when you realize how you’re successfully maintaining commitment to your goal by sticking to your plan.
3. Make it Easy on Yourself
Forming new habits is difficult enough — don’t make it any harder than it has to be!
If you want to form good habits, piggyback them on existing habits. Place the Dental Floss next to your toothpaste. Keep your “Learning Spanish” CD in the car and listen to it during your commute. Sleep in your workout clothes so you don’t need to change into them before your morning run.
Similarly, if you want to break bad habits, eliminate any temptations. Take only enough cash with you that you can afford to spend. Toss the cigarette cartons. Don’t buy soda or snacks. Remember that you are simultaneously your own worst enemy and best ally — so be sure that your actions are in sync with your goals!
To recap: Start Small, Have a Plan, and Make it Easy on Yourself. These are three simple strategies that I’m using to form good habits, and stick to my goals for 2011.
What about you? How are your New Years Resolutions going? If you’re still on target, please share your own strategies in the comments! If not, then let this article serve as a reminder for whatever it is you set out to do this year!
