Richard Branson’s 10 Steps for Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions
By: Dew Langrial
Tags: Self-awareness, Self Improvement, New Year Resolution, Mental Health, Psychology

Every year more than three billion people make New Year’s resolutions to quit smoking, lose weight, save more money, work out, leave their job, or get promoted, get a raise, start a business, find a perfect partner, and do many more things.

Most of the new year’s resolutions — around 80% — fail by February. The reason is that you are not emotionally committed to your goals, says Mark Murphy, author of Hard Goals: The Secret to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, in the Forbes.

In his book, Mark Murphy asks a question. What do Steve Jobs and a three-year-old have in common? He argues, though their final goals are different, these four points are shared among all the people who are going to reach their goals:

What they want is Heartfelt. If you aspire to reach your goals, you want to develop deep emotional attachments to your goals. “What they want will scratch an existential itch,” notes Murphy. Their goals are Animated. If you are serious about your goals, you see a movie in your head about how your work helps others and how they are enjoying the final product. Their work is Required. People who reach their goals believe they need to do what they are doing, and it’s necessary for their survival. They think people want the endproduct of their work. Their objective is Difficult. If you hope to be successful, your goals are not easy. You want to ‘enter uncharted territory.’ You set your goals that scare you a little.

When your goal tests your limits, your brain will be alive — neurons literally lighting up with excitement. ~ Mark Murphy

Suppose your resolutions meet the above points. Now, if you want to act on your intentions, the basic idea is simple: “Just write them down,” Sir Richard Branson declared in his blog.

Richard Branson offers a step-by-step process to reach your goals:

Write down every single idea you have in your notebook — small or big. Always carry your notebook with you. When need to write your ideas down — using your mobile is better than nothing — a piece of paper is far more memorable. Find a listing method that suits you. Doodles, bullet-points, charts? Make a list of your daily targets. Cut your day up into chunks, and you’ll get lots more done. Mark off every completed task. Ticking off a job well done brings satisfaction. Measure your results, so you know if your plans are working. No point in setting targets if you can’t know whether you are hitting them. Set far off, outlandish goals. Not just short-term endpoints — think about 5 years or 50 years. List personal goals as well, not just business goals. There’s no real separation between work and life — it’s all just living. Share your goals, motivate one another, and hold each other to account. But in the end, you are doing this for yourself. Celebrate your small successes and big successes. Then make new lists of new goals.

Richard Branson says, he has boxes and boxes of old notes, filled with old lists, and he is always making more.

Final Thoughts

If you want to know whether you’ll stick to your new year’s resolutions, ask yourself this question: “Do you really care about your goals?” or “Does reaching your goals affects the lives of the people you love?”

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging — fMRI — researchers at University College, London, have demonstrated that if you have a deep emotional attachment to the people living around you, your brain shows altered neural activity in the scans.

If you feel your life and the lives of your loved ones depend on not abandoning your resolutions, you are much more likely to stick to your new year’s resolutions.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!