It’s Not too Late!
6 Things You Can Do Right Now to Take Action on the 2021 New Year’s Resolutions That You’ve Ignored for a Month
Those goals that you were so pumped to achieve just one month ago have lost their allure. You may have worked at them for a day or so, or maybe even a week, before the distractions of life pulled you away.
Don’t worry; you’re not alone. While my Communications Czar Podcast usually focuses on how we communicate with others, the newest episode is all about how we can productively talk to ourselves. I set out to discover how we can level up our self-talk so that we are motivated to take action and start achieving the things we say we want in life.
Sometimes podcast guests just fall into my lap. I’ll be reading a book or an article and someone explains something in a new way, or an expert has some great advice on how we can better connect with one another. I shoot over an email and my Calendly link and before you know it, we’re recording an episode. That was not the case with this episode. I spent weeks trying to find the right person to interview. I didn’t want someone who would get us all excited and then leave us feeling empty a few hours after the episode. I had to find an expert in human nature, someone who was productive and knew how to teach us how to take charge of ourselves.
When I came across the work of Christina Eanes, I knew she was destined to be our Guest Czar for this special episode. Eanes specializes in helping people transform their personal and professional lives. Far from a self-proclaimed “expert,” Eanes spent over 15 years in public service with the police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation — so she knows more than a thing or two about human nature. Now that Eanes has hung up her badge, she uses her background and experiences to help people take responsibility for their success and increase their ability to accomplish personal and professional goals.
Eanes was a font of actionable information that will propel you to dust off your 2021 resolutions and get to work. Here are 6 things you can do today to make progress:
1. Understand that everyone has a hard time taking on new endeavors
You’re not alone. New things are scary. Procrastination happens. “It’s just our brain, trying to protect us when something pops up that’s scary for us outside of our comfort zone,” Eanes states.
2. Give that negative voice in your head a name — and then tell it where it can go!
“In the coaching world, we call the negative self-talk either gremlins or saboteurs, and that pretty much embodies what they are — either gremlins getting in our way, or our minds sabotaging us through self-talk,” says Eanes.
In his classic book, “Taming Your Gremlin,” Rick Carson suggests personifying your negative self-talk as a gremlin. “He goes over several typical gremlins that people have,” explains Eanes. “Mine was Patty the Pleaser. Patty would start beating me up if I wasn’t doing things to help everyone else, even to my own detriment. If you want to get creative, draw a picture of your little gremlin. Give him a name, a little backstory. When that little negative self-talk jumps up, just say to yourself, ‘Oh, that’s just Patty. Thanks for jumping in there, Patty, but I don’t need you right now.’ Almost like separating yourself from yourself.”
3. Identify exactly how you self-sabotage
Eanes recommends another helpful resource: Shirzad Chamine’s work, both his book, “Positive Intelligence” and his website, positiveintelligence.com. “You can go on his website and take a free saboteur assessment.” There are 7 saboteurs. “The idea behind positive intelligence is that it is the quotient for the percentage of time that your brain is serving you versus the percentage of time it’s sabotaging you through negative self-talk. When you take that assessment, it ranks how you are doing with the 7 saboteurs that he has identified,” Eanes states.
Once you get your score, the website “goes into how it probably formed, what it is probably saying to you. Depending on the saboteur that you are engaged in, it gives you some tips for overcoming that specific type,” says Eanes. “Once you name it, it seems more manageable.”
4. Muster the momentum to start on — or restart — your resolutions
“The first step is to get control of the negative portion of that self-talk — however you do that, meditation, mindfulness, etc.,” Eanes states. The second part is to do a brain dump. “I do it on a whiteboard in my office. Everything that I want to do is in relation to a particular goal. There is a neurological basis for [the brain dump]; it gets it out of there so your brain’s not holding on to it. Then, start thinking about the one thing you can do right now to start working on that goal,” she suggests.
5. Ask yourself, “What’s the one thing I can do today to blow through an obstacle that is holding me back from taking action?”
“I worked with a guy who had it in his head that to get a good workout, he had to get to the gym. ‘But I can’t get to the gym,’ he said. So, I said, ‘Why do you have to get to the gym in order to get a good workout? Can’t you just take a 7-minute HIIT workout on an app?’” Resist the temptation to make a big to-do about taking action on your goal. “The brain likes to put up obstacles, so just blow through them. Ask yourself, ‘What’s the one thing I can do today to blow through that obstacle?’” Eanes suggests.
Also, create a waiting period for distractions that might pull you away from your goals “A rule set is what I recommend people come up with,” state Eanes. “If I have a new idea, whether it’s for a project I want to tackle or a goal I want to accomplish, or even something I want to buy, I write it down in my idea book. I am not allowed to act on it for at least 3 to 5 days. Then I go back and look at it. I may be like, “Oh, okay, maybe that’s not such a good idea or maybe that’s not a good goal.” However, after that waiting period, if I still think it’s a good one, I reassess. I’ll say, “Okay, is this a good direction to go? If I do it, what will I have to say no to? What do I have to put aside? How badly do I want this?” If it’s business, I’ll ask, “Is this income-generating? Is it quickly income-generating?” If so, maybe I’ll go with it. I’ll put the other thing aside for a little bit. I’ll create, essentially, a little ruleset. That first part of it — the waiting period — is very important. Then I put it through a little analysis depending on what part of my life it involves — if I continue to move forward and maybe push something else aside.”
6. Recruit an honest accountability partner
“I have an accountability partner and we communicate every Friday on how we are doing on our goals and what we accomplished,” says Eanes. But not just anyone will do. “Your accountability partner needs to be someone who will call you out if you are not living up to it. It needs to be someone who will motivate you to work hard to get things done before you have to report in to them,” she advises.
Roseann Galvan, host of The Communications Czar, is on a mission to help people improve the quality of their workplace communications. Check out her podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or www.CommunicationsCzar.com
