Keeping resolutions is a bugbear. Why? Our brain develops mental pathways when we continue to do something for a period of time. A resolution is usually an attempt to change and create a new pathway, but the brain wants to go back to the existing trail. It’s never easy, but there are behavioral things you can do to make it more likely to keep that resolution.
?Belief insertion. The easiest road is to create a pathway where one didn’t exist. As in: You never really thought about making www.brokerworldmag.com your home page, but now that you’ve thought about it, it’s a good thing to do.
?Create a slight detour. Taking the stairs two flights up instead of the elevator still gets you to the office. Swapping an apple for a donut still gets you a morning snack. Parking at the first open space instead of the closest space to the entrance still gets you into the store. Creating many small, painless behavioral detours can be just as effective as one big resolution.
?Make the resolution an absolute. If your daily goal is to make 100 calls to prospects and clients, then direct all of your efforts and attention to making the calls. Ignore everything else. If your goal is not to eat ice cream or to quit smoking, then that becomes the key goal of the day. Everything else is secondary. If you don’t make the resolution the primary goal, you will create excuses to avoid doing it. For instance, if your goal is to give up cigarettes then it might be a good idea to research some of the alternatives. Vaping for example has soared in popularity and is being spoken about as a safer alternative to smoking. Nowadays, you can even get Shortfill eliquids in just about any flavor too, so there are no excuses for not giving vaping a go if you are trying to stub out cigarettes for good. Unlike most other smoking devices, which rely on combustion, nebulizers like pax 3 vaporizer resort to heating. Therefore, eliminating your exposure to potentially harmful toxins.
?Don’t start resolutions when there are external obstacles. Starting a diet on New Year’s Day when you’re beginning a Caribbean cruise the next means a failed resolution. A goal of making 100 calls a day won’t happen if the field examiner walks in for an audit. If you encounter an external obstacle, shelf the resolution until the obstacle is gone and try again.
?Make it a default choice. If your resolution was to go for a swim each morning, throwing your car keys in the pool each night would aid in keeping it (or you’d walk more and still get some exercise). If you’re trying to lose weight, filling up the fridge and pantry with nothing but vegetables means you’ll either eat right or have to go out of your way to get something else.
?Self-punishment. If you don’t hit your sales or activity goal today, you deny yourself an activity you find pleasurable. “Eat your cauliflower and you’ll get cake for dessert” is still an effective behavioral tool.
?Bring the future into the present. Many resolutions have a distant end goal: Sell $3 million of annuities this year; lose 20 pounds by June. This can cause you to procrastinate or get discouraged if you fall off track. Instead, break the long term goal down into short term ones. You will lose a pound a week or you will sell $60,000 of annuities a week. If you blow it for a couple weeks it doesn’t take much to get on track-you now have to lose 1.1 pound a week or sell $62,500 of annuities to still hit the goal.
?Be a nag. You can set smartphones to sound alarms at multiple times. If your goal is to spend more time during the day working instead of goofing off, a series of alarms will cause you to work more to avoid being caught not working. If your goal is to get in 30 minutes of daily exercise and you place sticky notes all over your house asking “Did you exercise yet?” you’re more likely to exercise.
