How to Increase your Chance at Change

… or how to make a lasting New Year’s resolution for 2021

This blog post should probably start with the question of:

Who do you want to be?

In a perfect world, in which you had all resources — time, money, whatever it may be — how would you live your life? How would you BE in that life? What would you want to change?

And then the next question is: What do you really want to achieve by that?

What’s your ultimate goal?

Let’s say, you wanted to start exercising more. What’s your intention behind it? Is it about physical health? Do you want to stay fit into old age? Live long to see your children and grandchildren grow up? Or is it about improving your emotional health and let off some steam? Or do you care about your looks ultimately? Everything is valid.

Why knowledge cannot help you make the cut

Typically when we set out to make a change about ourselves, we know or think we know what the benefits of that change should be. You could decide to work on your confidence for particular situations that always give you sweaty hands and a raised heart rate. You know — from a logical stand-point — this might help you to take the next step in your career and/or simply support how you feel about yourself.

You might even already know what exactly should happen to make that change. In our exercise example you could prepare a schedule to do your workouts and try to stick to it. In your attempt to raise your confidence game you could set yourself a plan to practice power-posing and speaking in front of a mirror twice a week.

However, it’s hard to stick to our own schedules and make a lasting change. Our habits, environment, emotions get in the way. You can always find a reason to not practice and justify it to yourself up to the point at which you give up.

The impact of adding accountability into the mix

Giving into your reasons gets harder though if you have talked about your planned change with someone. A big part of our success to achieve what we want to is impacted by our feeling of accountability. This is why for some people it’s easier to work for a company they feel accountable towards compared to working on their own projects.

So it makes sense to extrapolate that accountability onto your goal. You have to create an environment that leads you towards success. If someone is looking at your work towards a change, it will make you perform better. It makes you more likely to follow through with your commitments. You will be better at meeting deadlines. And it gets harder to get stuck in negative thinking or stick with small problems for too long. You will benefit from the others experience, own failures and successes. It’s been scientifically proven that having a partner in your endeavour to change will increase your chances up to 95%.

95% is a big number. What do you think?!

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Sometimes, we don’t want to share a goal with someone we know though for a number of reasons. Plus, not everyone — even a close friend — is as committed to motivate you. Last but not least, it might be best to find someone who knows the traps along the way and someone who is not afraid to tell you openly where you need to improve. If you’re looking for that person, we are able to help: Habit Partners Program @freedomxx