As the clock ticks down on 2020, many of us will be focussed on making the most of Christmas after an extraordinary year.

Yet even as you wind down and enjoy a bit of a break and the odd mince pie, it pays to allocate a little headspace right now to think about what your New Year’s resolutions might be.

Of course, if you make resolutions then you’re increasing unusual.

Because today just one in five of us make any New Year’s resolutions at all.

And of those, only a quarter manage to stick to them all.

So as the New Year approaches, should our only resolution be to make no more New Year's resolutions?

Absolutely not.  

Despite the generally poor record of keeping to resolutions, there is in fact a huge benefit in setting them.

Because the act of making a resolution can be an incredibly powerful way of achieving what you want.

It can give you a focus, drive and sense of purpose that can propel you forward with a real vigour.

After the permissiveness and relaxations of the festive season – another drink, another late night, another mince pie – it can be a way of getting back on track that can make the difference between an average year and a transformational one.

So if they're worth doing, how do we do them well?

Most often, the problem is not that we make New Year’s resolutions, but rather that we make them so badly.

You might have read that New Year's resolutions fail because they're too big and grand, and not specific and manageable enough, but in fact, the opposite is true.

It's not that we don’t get granular enough, but that we generally set our ambitions far too low.

To be really effective, we should be thinking about the fundamental changes that we want to make in our life over the next twelve months. 

Which means that the ONLY New Year’s resolution we should ever set is to find the time at the beginning of the year to sit down and really map out goals that will unleash our full potential as we start out on a brand spanking new year of opportunity and achievement.

To delve deep into what we want to make of the life ahead of us, and to explore what would make it have real purpose.

How we could grow and develop, instead of standing still or worse going backwards.

To get down on paper a clear idea of what we would need to do in the shorter term to achieve that big goal. 

To map out what the milestones to getting there would be.

And then the actions we need to take every day and every week to achieve these milestones.

In that way, to be clear about the big picture, the medium term steps towards that, and then the actions we take to take those steps.

A great big life-changing goal, set and then broken down into a plan. 

The turn of the year gives us an opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved over the past twelve months and to get clear about what we want the next twelve to be about.

It marks the passing of time, the moving forward of our short lives.

Properly put to work it can really work for us.

So we should grasp that opportunity to set out our path for the year ahead with both hands. 

If each of us resolved every 31 December only to do that piece of work, imagine what we could achieve.

If you are ready to map out an exceptional year of ambition, action and achievement, book a call with us today.