Enough With The Excuses!

Whatever you did last year, now is the time for the truth. There's no point starting 2010 believing that a few New Year's Resolutions will be enough. Instead, take the time this year to truly evaluate your performance and decide what changes you need to make and what actions you need to take, to make 2010 really count.

What worked?

Which of your goals did you reach last year? If you didn't have any formal goals then take the time now to list out your achievements instead. Were there any particular strategies you implemented to ensure you achieved these? If so note them down as they will be useful for this year.

Which goals didn't you achieve?

Unless you're superhuman (or set yourself low targets) you probably didn't achieve everything you'd hoped to (some not even started perhaps...!) Consider your goals for a minute and decide the real reasons you didn't achieve them. Were they no longer relevant to you or your business or just too much effort? Be honest.

Get tough with yourself

It's 2010, a decade has passed since Y2K - how much have you and your business really progressed since then. Are you where you thought you'd be? Are you where you want to be? If not get tough with yourself and ask yourself what's holding you back? Skill gaps? Laziness? Lack of support? Lack of motivation? Lack of knowledge?

Having identified these things, decide what you are going to do about them.

The power of baby steps

If you broke a goal down into 100 baby steps and then took just one step a day - you'd achieve your goal in 100 days! Not rocket science I know, but something worth talking to your sales force about!

Are you prepared this year to start doing what you really want to be doing and stop hiding behind all the reasons why it doesn't happen?

Ask yourself questions like:

- "What do I want to have achieved by the end of this year?"

- "What am I prepared to change about my actions in order to achieve this?"

- "What can I do today to take my first step towards this goal?"

- "Who will I need help or support from? When am I going to ask them for it?"

- "Am I prepared to stop listing all the reasons why I can't do it and accept these are just excuses that are holding me back?"

Structure your answers into 'Smarter' Goals and then take the time to break these down into specific actions.

Take one day at a time

Mark Foster in his book "Get everything done and still have time to play", set out a core skill that we all need to develop - our ability to decide the one thing that we are going to achieve today, however small, and making sure we do it.

Skills need to be practised if we want to develop them - just ask any great sportsman how many hours a week they have to practise in order to become great.

It you can't achieve your goal then, ridiculous as it sounds, it's too hard. So set a simpler task for the following day. Keep repeating this exercise until you achieve it. When you regularly achieve the one task that you set yourself each day then you can slowly make the task harder and in time, add another and another.

What is important here is the daily routine of committing to do one thing every day and then doing it. That is how you make progress.

Take Action

Think hard about where you really want to be by the end of this year. If you look back at the end of 2010 and ask yourself the same questions I asked you at the beginning of this article, namely: Which of your goals did you achieve last year? Were there any particular strategies you implemented to ensure you achieved these goals? What answer would you now give?

- What are you going to do differently this year to ensure you are more fulfilled and thereby more successful?

- What is the baby step you have set for tomorrow? And the day after?

- How are you planning on maintaining the momentum?

- Are you committed to stop making excuses?

Choose 2010 to be the year you really make a difference, to yourself and your business - learn to take those baby steps!