Lead Yourself in the New Year
Common traditions for the new year include attending parties, eating special New Year’s foods, making resolutions, and watching fireworks displays. Most of us approach a new year with hopeful expectations. It’s a new start! We imagine brighter days ahead, anticipating a better self, greater financial success, and healthier relationships. There is the aroma of possibility in the atmosphere.
As a runner at the start of a race, we toe the line, ready to dart forward into the new year. But, as you can imagine and have likely experienced, it becomes harder and harder to continue the race to achieve our goals as the weeks pass. Life is a great distractor. Have you been there? Research reveals that 80% of New Year’s goal-setters abandon their resolutions by February. That’s only one month, friends. Congratulations if you stick with your resolution beyond that juncture. How did you do it? Let me suggest three helpful tips for you as a leader to start and finish well in 2024.
#1 Set a Specific and Meaningful Goal
Staying power to achieve a goal lessens over time when it is too broad or not truly important to you. What is a change you seek that quickens your heart rate, inspires you to dream, and motivates you? Rather than tackling a broad endeavor where success is difficult to measure, narrow it to an achievable one. How will you know that you’ve reached it? Write down these indicators. They are your measuring tape. Consider setting steppingstone goals to demonstrate to yourself progress on your journey.
#2 Be Intentional
No one will get you dressed in the morning or brush your teeth for you at night. Similarly, no one will do the work that only you can do to execute change. You must do the work yourself with intentionality and effort. A runner described to me how he prepared for a marathon: “The hardest part was putting on my shoes. Once they were on, I was in motion.” While we would all love to quickly run ahead to Step Five, the reality is that each of us begins with Step One: put on shoes. No victory comes without discipline and an adjustment of habits. Leaders imagine a brighter future; we dream; we foresee the fruits. But, as all successful athletes do, we must also visualize doing the change, thinking through the next choice, maybe discussing it with another, and role playing the action. Just be sure to take the action. No one else will put on your shoes for you.
#3 Prepare for Discouragement
It is naïve to believe that any of us will reach our goals without some failure along the way. Ask Thomas Edison as he struggled to get that lightbulb to work. Talk to Mike Tyson as he trained for years to face much bigger fighters in the ring. Discuss with Rosa Parks how it felt to sit at the front of the bus. Anything worth achieving requires sacrifice and, honestly, elements of suffering. Knowing the uphill battles before us, it is wise to invite a supportive friend or colleague to join you as you run your race. Alone, people will fizzle out over time. Those who reach their goals often have at least one other person to encourage and push them along. Prepare for the moments of frustration and disillusionment because they will come. Reward yourself for reaching steppingstones. Just because we stumble does not mean we have failed, and just because it is taking longer than expected does not mean we have lost the race. Keep the eye on the finish line.
New Year’s is about beginnings, a fresh start, hope. We as leaders continue looking forward when others do not. Let us resolve to embrace change and create change for a changing time.
What change would you like to see in yourself and your organization in this new year?