How to Tell You Are Committed to Your 2023 Goals
There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you only do it when circumstances permit. When you’re committed to doing something, you accept no excuses just results.
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Strava’s research using over 800 million user-logged activities found most people give up on their New Year’s Resolution by January 19 —appropriately called “Quitters Day.” There’s an invisible missing piece to annual goal setting that will cause you and millions of other people to fail to achieve important 2023 goals. In conventional goal setting, there is no formal process for declaring commitments to do whatever is required to accomplish goals. Simply come up with compelling measurable goals and goal execution should be automatic.
Making resolutions, getting an accountability partner, or writing goals in a timeline are helpful but insufficient unless you take an uncommon step—declare your commitment. You weed out goals you’re merely interested in accomplishing from the ones you’re “no matter what” committed to delivering results.
How do you tell the difference? The outcome of being interested is having good reasons to never attempt a challenging goal or to explain failure to achieve the desired outcome. It appears you’re giving your best effort under difficult circumstances. In reality, you’re doing what seems realistic, reasonable, or comfortable. Being interested is an escape hatch from the rigorous effort required to achieve most heartfelt goals. Interest indicates you’re committed to maintaining comfort.
The outcome of commitment is results. When you are “no matter what” committed, you take required actions to get desired results. Declaring a commitment does not guarantee success, since we can’t control unforeseeable circumstances. The one thing we have total control over is our effort.
Commitment offers peace of mind when we encounter failure. There are no regrets from failure when you can be ruthlessly honest knowing, “I did everything that was required to succeed.
Ruthlessly Honest Question
How do you benefit by being ruthlessly honest by distinguishing goals you’re only interested in accomplishing from no matter what goal commitments?
Heroic Experiment for This Week
Scrutinize each of your 2023 goals, by asking two questions:
Am I committed to doing whatever effort or risk is required to succeed?
—OR—
Am I interested in trying to achieve the goal if circumstances work out?
If you are only interested, make the goal a lower priority or delete it for this year. Acknowledge the truth and save yourself unnecessary frustration.
Pause now: This distinction—commitment vs interest–appeared on millions of Starbuck’s cups in The Way I See It Series.
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