New Year's Resolution Project | Part 3

We ended the previous part with the three steps you should do in order to make decisions to change, not only as a New Year resolution but for a lifetime, which were: Vision, Reasons and Reminders.

Those of you who haven't read the previous part, I strongly advise you do – Here

Now I'll focus on the last and final step along with some operative tips to put everything you read into action.

The Fourth Step Is A Ritual:

The last thing left to do in order to make your new standards permanent, is a ritual done on a regular basis.

The power of your standards lies in your rituals – some are fixed and some vary:

The fixed ritual will serve to remind yourself (by saying it out loud) your vision, to go through it, examine it and improve it.

This is the time to remind yourself (again, by saying it out loud) of the reasons and maybe even come up with new reasons.

In the varied ritual, the goal is to take a big and scary task and divide it into smaller tasks, do one smaller task a day, a small step every day - to create small victories.

These rituals define us.

All the outcomes in our life result from standards backed by rituals.

For example, if someone is committed to being fit, he has a whole lot of different rituals than someone who isn't committed to it…

If someone maintains a relationship that based on love and passion, when he comes home from work he has a whole lot of different rituals than someone who isn't committed to it… and perhaps the ritual of the one who is not committed, is to come home as late as he can...

This is a great opportunity to remind you to look for successful people around you, explore what their small rituals are.

Success And Failure

It's important to remember - success and failure aren't major events that happen over night nor do they come out of the blue; you don't become successful in one day and you don't experience a devastating failure in one day.

Success and failure are built with small things that add up to something massive, which leads to that same failure or success.

When we fail - the human tendency is to blame that critical event that lead to the failure, but this of course isn't accurate – it's the little stuff we should have done and haven't that are responsible for the failure, it's the rituals we didn't stick to...

Same goes with success: the big event is the outcome, the rituals in which you reminded yourself of your fascinating vision that sparked you with creative ideas, the excellent reasons pulling you forward when the challenges threatened to knock you over and the small steps on the way - all these led to this outcome.

Remember, a celebrity (being it an actor, singer, businessman, leader, etc.) is someone recognized, but the recognition came only after he worked on it for a period of time, without anyone knowing who he is at the time.

The legendary basketball player Michael Jordan, was once asked what makes him stand out from the others - his answer was:

I won't lie and tell you I wasn't blessed with talent and ability, and kept a strict training regime, but the bottom line is that what made me stand out from the others were the standards I set for myself.

I demanded of myself every day, more than anything you could expect. I wasn't competing against others. I was competing against myself – constantly pushing the limits.

Some of us have a tendency to look for people with lower standards, whether they are friends, work colleagues or even people starring in reality shows - it gives a good feeling because our standards are supposedly higher…

This good feeling is of course real, but deep down we know it's fictitious.

The only thing that will give you a genuine and honest good feeling, is to raise your standard one step further - to decide that you're going forward with it, find out what you're capable of, to feel the satisfaction of breaking barriers, discover abilities you didn't think you had in you.

Raising your standard isn't a one time event.

If you didn't succeed, it's time to raise the standard. More importantly, if you achieve an exceptional success then this is the exact moment to raise the bar!

You know deep inside you, that this is definitely the step that will keep the success going.

So, now that you've done your reading, it's time to take things into action…

Here are some tips to implement the written into action, in a functional way:

1. Think about an important area in your life (perhaps physical, economical, career, relationship), you would like to improve and why? Write down what you'll gain from this improvement - in other words, reason, and the more the better.

2. Write down in detail, how this area looks nowadays. Be very specific and honest.

3. Write down the little rituals that brought you to this state described in the previous tip.

Again, be honest with yourself.

4. Write down in detail, what must be changed specifically; what your vision is for this area in your life.

5. Write down in detail, the rituals you'll carry out on a regular basis; the rituals that will lead you there. Be specific.

For your convenience, you can download a form where you can write your answers:

"New Year's Resolution Project answer form"

(opens in a new window)

Let me remind you, willpower doesn't last too long – but rituals do!

I imagine there are rituals you've been doing for many years now, even if you don't have any benefit from them…

The beginning of a new year is a great time to wake up and shake off the dust on your rituals, not only to begin a better year, but to begin a better life.

You must remember that a success in one area will reflect on other areas in your life, whether you want it to or not.

Start today! Make this article your new beginning, start with small things.

You are guaranteed a bonus called 'momentum' that will result from this; you are guaranteed a satisfaction from your growth and development to come.

I wish you a successful year, a year of decision making, a year of ongoing success – to you and your loved ones.

Summary

* In order to make your new standards permanent, you need a ritual.

* A fixed ritual will remind you of your vision and reasons.

* A varied ritual will split a complex goal to smaller, less overwhelming tasks.

* All the outcomes in our life result from standards backed up by rituals.

* Success and failure aren't major events that happen over night.

* Demand of yourself more than anything you could expect.

* You're in competition with yourself, a contest of testing your limits.

* Raising your standard isn't a one time event, it's relevant when confronting challenges

& at the peak of your success too.

* A success in one area reflects on other areas in your life.

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Previous articles:

* New Year's Resolution Project | Part 2

* New Year's Resolution Project

* New Year, New Beginning

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