Resolutions

Do you brush your teeth every day? How does that go for you? Do you have to think about it and give yourself a pep talk to get yourself into that bathroom and do it?

While you're pondering these questions, let me throw in one more. Did you make any resolutions about a year ago? If so, how many of them have you kept? If you're like many of us you have made and repeatedly broke resolutions. This really erodes your confidence. It's not keeping your word to yourself and that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Now I hope you're wondering what these questions have in common. The short answer is that self-discipline does not work, change is hard and it's possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are all born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, so there is just about nothing you can do to get more.

Let's take a simple example of a business related New Year's resolution. You resolve to grow your business by doing more follow-up in the coming year. Monday, January 3, 2011, rolls around and you make follow-up calls to five potential client with whom you've had conversations. You do that again on the 4th and the 5th. On the 6th you get busy with a new project and you just make 3 calls. On the 7th you have a meeting that takes up your entire morning and you just don't have the energy to pick up that phone. The weekend rolls around, then it's Monday the 10th and you just have a ton of paperwork to get through. You don't give much thought to follow-up calls. The calls start to get sporadic, you're not really sure how many you're doing, and one more resolution goes down the drain.

Now how come you brush your teeth everyday without struggle, without really using any energy thinking about it, without becoming distracted from it? The reason is that brushing your teeth is a well established ritual. No effort, no thought, you just do it. You were not born with a brushing your teeth as ritual gene. You developed it as a ritual. Given the benefit derived from brushing your teeth over your lifetime, the effort and time that it took to establish it as a ritual is minimal.

If you would like to make changes, make a resolution and keep it, change your focus to creating a ritual, and forget using self-discipline. Not to say that it starts off with no effort, but if you focus on creating a ritual for a relatively short amount of time, it quickly becomes effortless and you've got a new ritual that is moving you towards your goal.

Building rituals requires defining very precise behavior and performing those behaviors at very specific times. It also helps to be clear on your motivation for the behavior. Most of us don't brush our teeth when we think of it. Some people do it as soon as they get out of bed, others after breakfast, but whenever it is, the time is the same every day, and you are doing the same thing every time. Your Mom, or whoever got you doing it, was highly motivated by wanting you to be healthy ( and maybe saving on those dental bills).

Back to our example. You decide that to grow your business you need to do follow-up calls. You make it a New Year's resolution. You will do five a day, at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is an unbreakable appointment that you put in your calendar. In January, it's an effort, you have to force yourself to keep that appointment sometimes, but you really want to grow your business, so you do it. It's easier in February, and by March, it's kind of like brushing your teeth!

This applies to any change that you want to introduce into your life, and can be done at any time of the year. It works, although, it works best if you limit yourself to one or two at a time. So do it now, think of one or two rituals that you would like to introduce into your life and commit to a regular time to practice them. Why wait until January 3rd? Do it today, by the 3rd it will be as easy as brushing your teeth.