Failing At Your New Years Resolution? Build Lifestyle Goals That Play to Your Strengths
The older we are the less likely we are to have a New Years resolution because most New Years resolutions are written to fail. Move out of the basement of weakness. Find the stairs to your goals.
As we approach the end of February, a few of us might struggle with maintaining the lifestyle goals we tried to talk ourselves into in January. We are entering the seventh week of the year, and by now, enough of life will have been thrown at you to throw you off of your lifestyle resolution for a day or more.
I recently was a part of a Clifton Strengths coaching class with some other delightful women I had the chance to get to know over several months. If you are not familiar with Clifton Strengths, it is a test that you pay for that rates your strengths out of 34 predefined strengths involved in the analysis. The whole theory behind this researched-based personality assessment is that you need to play to your strengths instead of improving your weaknesses. Your weaknesses are your weaknesses. We are all made differently, so try to find jobs and do the things with your loved ones that allow you to live in your strengths. My bottom strength is Adaptability, defined as being a ‘now’ person who discovers the future one day at a time. As I sit in front of my 3’x4’ whiteboard, I agree I prefer to plan an inspiring future instead of arriving in it like a ride at an adventure park. There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone with Adaptability as their number one strength. I would want them around as that is where I am weak.
What is unique about the Clifton Strengths is that your strengths are rooted in one of four domains: relationship building, executing, influencing, and strategic thinking. You will have strengths in several domains, but there will be a clear overall strength domain for you. Your strengths not only allow you to understand yourself better, but they empower you to understand how to use your strengths to make things happen. One of the individuals in the group mentioned that she had more success when she did her annual vision board with her strengths in mind. I have known about the Clifton Strengths for several years, so I feel like it should not have come as such an aha moment, but that statement shifted my paradigm of goal setting. For someone with the majority of her strengths in relationship-building, her goals would feel exciting when they focus on how relationships will be strengthened or improved. In the past, she found writing a generic goal uninspiring and something she was doing because she should. Now she uses her relationships to power the goals that empower herself and others to move forward in a specific direction. For me, this was huge because finding minor tweaks for helping people with goals brings me fulfillment as nerdy and cliche as that might sound.
The art of writing a goal that will allow for success in the big picture is challenging and is discussed in books by Charles Duhigg, Wendy Wood, Micheal Hyatt, and so many others. No one makes perfect lifestyle choices day in and day out because we are not robots. But do your goals push you to make better body fuel choices? Are your goals written in a way where a failure on Tuesday doesn’t mean failure for the rest of the days that week and the next two weeks? Writing goals based on your strengths is all about writing goals where you understand WHY you are working on making different habits.
One thing that keeps me working towards lifestyle goals is that I want to have a relationship with my active kids. I have most of my strengths are in the relationship-building domain. I want a particular relationship with my kids. I don’t want to be on the sidelines. I want to cross-country ski, try surfing with them, or go hiking with them. Each year my goals reflect the desire to be active with them. I eat better than last year for them. I stay physically active for them. It isn’t wrong that my goals are focused on relationships and what I want them to look like. It is what keeps me motivated.
Action Steps: Pick out a goal you failed at and see if there was a reason behind why you thought you wanted to work on that goal? Was there a why? Could you create a powerful why that would push you to sacrifice for that goal so you can succeed? Ask a friend out for coffee and talk about it. Will it be humbling and uncomfortable? Probably. But you will also have someone in your corner who knows your struggle and maybe they will even be empowered to reach for their own failed goal too.