The 2019 Resolution: Be Olympic!

At the beginning of every year, the majority of people try to set new year’s resolutions aiming to do something bigger the following year, or get better at something specific, or in general achieve something greater in life. The biggest challenge with this is that a great number of people set unrealistic goals and they will give up half way through the year, and this post intends to help people with their new year’s resolution through setting this resolution in the “Olympic” way!

Rule 1: Choose your game!

Olympic games are not for everyone, and players who play boxing aren’t possibly qualified for wrestling just because they have strong bodies .. Every game has its own soul inside .. its own identity, objectives, rules and techniques.. Olympics is not for generic players, but it is for specialized professionals ..

Watch the Olympics and reflect, did you see players doing more than one game and winning gold medals in both games? Players doing Karate and Judo for example? Football and basketball?

Now reflect on this a bit .. are you playing the same game every year and trying to be better at it? or are you confused with which game to play? Trying to be an entrepreneur? Businessman? Great employee? Travel the world? .. What is your main goal and objective?

It all starts by choosing the game, because once you choose it right, then you will be able to have a plan on how to progress every year ..

Make 2019 your year of “Game Choice”!

Rule 2: Look under your feet

It is very important to be realistic and set achievable, but stretching targets.. This will only start by understanding your position and current status ..

What is your financial status? What are your current skills levels? Capacity? Resources? Who is there to support you? Your current commitments? Daily routine? ..etc .. It is very important to understand where you are now in order to be realistic in setting your goals afterwards, and setting unrealistic targets is possible the one biggest reason why people give up half way through and decide to quit the journey … It just becomes too hard to achieve ..

Rule 3: Follow the A.T.P. discipline

With the majority of people knowing the SMART rule for setting objectives (Specific / Measurable / Achievable / Realistic / Time-bound), a great deal of people miss one very important thing, .. DIRECTION!

In statistics, they will teach you the difference between reliability and validity, and here is a quick brief that is extremely important for everyone to learn ..

Reliability means that every time you shoot, the shot will hit the same place more or less (depends on the standard deviation of error), so you will hit the same spot with an error ranging around 10% to the right or the left of the targeted spot. If you do this every time, then you are very reliable.

Validity is all depending on whether you hit the spot you wanted to hit from the first place!! The “Aimed-At” spot! .. And this is the biggest fail for people depending just on setting SMART objectives, that sometimes they are very reliable, but hitting the absolutely wrong spot! Then hitting it again and again and again, celebrating reliability but missing validity!.. It means nothing if I am selling every single day to thousand customers but at the wrong price! or at the wrong profit margin! What am I celebrating then??

So before you think of targets being SMART, add one “S” in the beginning and make it …”S-Smart” … “Strategically” SMART. And this is the first part of the A.T.P. rule … “Aim”!

Then comes the second part .. “Training”

As I have just explained the importance of “Aiming” to achieve validity of goals,  “Training” is very important to achieve reliability of tools that shall help you achieve your goals..

In training, it is not only about trying over and over to achieve the goal, but it is about using various ways, techniques, and tools to hit your target, and evaluating your progress as you go. For example, you want to achieve physical fitness .. training is not about just running every day .. it is about using more than one tool, like running, gym, swimming, ..etc and changing your life style so that if one day one tool doesn’t work, then other tools will compensate for this and your reliability (frequency of achieving your target) will increase ..

Don’t be like the one who only depends on running, then when it rains they don’t run .. the more you make training a change in life style the better reliability that you will get, and the lower risk your plans will be at. You intend to learn, then read, listen to audio books, watch educational videos on YouTube, talk to intellectual people, attend lectures …etc .. don’t depend on one method ..

The final part then of the A.T.P. rule is … “Perseverance”

“Failing” is an integral part of success, and if you ever thought that successful people made their life through like we see in the movies .. this is pure fiction my friend! Steve Jobs got fired from the company he has established and Richard Branson had several financial struggles during his business career, and hundreds of other examples ..

When you fall, and you will fall, it will be painful, ………… and when you repeatedly fall, it will be more painful and you will reach a level where you question whether it is worth it to continue .. Just lie down on the ground, look to the sky and touch your lungs .. be calm and think .. you lungs are still moving .. air is still in .. your heart is beating .. you are still there .. it is not over yet .. there is a purpose of why you are still there .. there is still a chance that you make it .. you have the choice at this moment to stand up, continue, or quit .. it is not anyone’s choice but yours! Slowly get up, rub the dust away, start warming up again, and go on again .. go slowly, then run towards your goal once more

While we kick start 2019 .. I look at the past 2018 years and wonder .. How many resolutions were made over those couple of thousand years, how many made a difference, and how many just quit .. Which ones are written in history? and which ones are buried without a record? ..

Write your own history of achievements, make a plan, and make a difference ..

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher