WE all strive for a better future, we want all want to live out our dreams and create the life we want. It is this desire for a prosperous life that compels us to create a roadmap in the form of New Year resolutions. Without a clear roadmap, it’s easy to start procrastinating and to become paralysed by indecision and moving forward becomes impossible. Many Namibians, in the hope of achieving a better future, set themselves New Year’s resolutions, but according to the researcher Richard Wiseman, 88 percent of all those New Year’s resolutions are never implemented and fail, resulting in major frustrations and a state of crisis.
Many organizations and companies take a break from their busy day to day activities and go on a retreat to reflect on their performance to date, review the goals they had set themselves at the beginning of the year and make adjustments where necessary for the rest of the year in order to remain on track. We are now in August and the year seems to be whizzing by and the question is: Are you making progress in achieving your New Year’s goals? When was the last time you reviewed those New Year’s resolutions? The purpose of this article is to remind and help you check in on your 2013 New Year’s resolutions and goals to see how much you have accomplished, how things are going and to help you get back on track.
The Power of New Year’s Resolutions
New Year’s resolutions are nothing but your New Year’s goals and without goals you will be living reactively, letting life push you around and end up moving in circles. Your New Year’s resolutions are the new goals you set to achieve in the following year. Personal goals are the fundamental building blocks of success in every area of life. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the most of your life. With goals, you can live a proactive life, steering toward a destination. By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you’ll see progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind.
Why a Mid-Year Review?
A mid-year review is necessary because we live in an uncertain and volatile environment that makes planning difficult. Mid-year is also a good time to analyze where you are at, as far as achieving your goals is concerned. Are you ahead of the game or lagging far behind? Whatever the case, the evaluation will assist in helping you continue on in your journey or stepping up the pace to catch up to your original resolution time frame. Remove those goals that may no longer be part of your life and make changes to others to make them current and applicable. Your resolutions in January were made under a set of assumptions that were valid then, but seven months down the line your family, employment and income level situation might have changed and these changes may require you to re-adjust your New Year’s resolutions.
Just to give you an example, I assisted someone at the beginning of 2013 in setting up her 2013 New Year’s resolutions and one of her resolutions was to save a total of N$25 000 by the end of November 2013, making a monthly contribution of N$2000. In June 2013 her employer announced that her job was re-graded and she was to receive a back pay of N$30 000 and she was also promoted. With these unexpected changes in her income and employment conditions, she re-adjusted her target savings amount to N$60 000 by November 2013 from N$25 000. Her colleagues who also received back pay and had no clearly defined resolutions and goals, ended up spending their windfall income and within a month they were back knocking on doors of banks for more loans.
Too Many Goals & Unrealistic Resolutions
Many people fail to accomplish their New Year’s resolutions because they set too many goals, make unrealistic resolutions, or their goals were vague. If you set too many goals (e.g. 10 goals), you may end up achieving none, but for best results, rank your goals in order of priority and focus on your top three goals. You can always attend and do more later or add a new goal when you achieve one of those on your priority list. You may have set New Year’s resolutions in different areas of your life such as improving your personal finance (e.g. get out of debt); your career (attain a particular skill); family (spend on at least two meals a weekend with children and spouse); health (losing weight and eating healthy foods); spiritual (attend weekly Bible studies); charitable work or professional goals and plans that you wished to accomplish in 2013.
A number of researchers found that the more specific you make your goals, the more likely you are to succeed. Instead of saying I want to get out of debt, state your goal of getting out of debts as follows: “I will pay off the balance on my credit card, personal loan, and store credit account by October 2013.” If you want to become healthier and lose weight, identify the foods and things that cause you to gain weight and instead of saying: “I want to become healthier and lose weight,” make a specific goal that reads: “I will lose 10kg over three months by not eating sugar, red meat, etc and exercise three times a week.”
Tips for Conducting a Mid-Year Review:
1. Write down the goals you had set yourself at the beginning of the year: It is good to “categorize” your goals in the following manner: finances, personal development, health, career, family, social life, etc.
2. Write down how you have progressed in each category: Next to each goal, simply write down whether you have already succeeded or if you still need to work on it.
3. Write down one or two of the biggest challenges you encountered, as well as one or two things that helped you to achieve your goals.
4. Are there any new goals you would like to set for yourself? If you have achieved one goal much earlier, add another new resolution.
5. Congratulate, entertain yourself, and write yourself and others a wish to succeed.
Finally: Achieving any New Year’s resolution is a challenge, because it means you have to work at it for the next 12 months on a daily basis, but keep in mind that anything worth achieving will not be easy. Whether you have two or ten resolutions, it is a good idea to evaluate your progress several times during the year, and remember to give yourself a break and to reward yourself.
• Martin Mwinga works for First Capital Treasury Solutions and can be contacted at mwinga@firstcapitalnam.com.
By Martin Mwinga