Time for a New Year's 'revolution'

Editor's note: The Coaches Corner column appears regularly on the DrBicuspid.com advice and opinion page, Second Opinion.

"This is it," you say to yourself. This is the year I will:

1. lose some weight
2. get more exercise
3. make more money

You and everyone else. The problem is that by this time next year, nothing will have changed.

Experts who study New Year's resolutions tell us that most resolutions are abandoned after just two weeks. Virtually all are forgotten within three months. Not convinced? Just compare your local health club's attendance in January, and then in April.

Want real change in your life? Don't succumb to New Year's resolutions that rarely succeed. Instead, make a New Year's revolution.

A resolution is most often a determination to improve or change a situation incrementally. Usually, the change is something you think you should do, not a change you want to do. Sometimes the impetus for change is external: some event or person has decided for you that you should change. Either way, your resolutions will fail. More than 99% do.

What's worse, when you keep making -- and failing -- the same resolutions year after year, you institutionalize failure. That means you have learned to accept failure as the norm. This makes it harder and harder to finally create the change you really want. Resolutions become wishes.

Revolutions are different. Revolutions are not incremental changes -- they are a fundamentally different way of working, living, leading, or governing. Revolutions are not more or less of the same old thing.

Revolutions begin with dissatisfaction of the status quo. Revolutions require a new perspective: a new way of looking at a problem. The only way you can achieve significant change is if you create a new system that will make a permanent difference.

Start by asking yourself how dissatisfied you really are. Maybe it's your weight, your fitness, your marriage, or your financial situation. You may privately whine about your situation, but the reality is that if everything is the same month after month, you are actually pretty comfortable with the present.

Next, you have to decide why you want to change your situation. Forget why you should do something. Instead, focus on why you want to do something. What's the cost/benefit to you personally if you make a change?

Finally, create a goal and set up a plan to achieve that goal. Motivation isn't enough. The people in the health club are motivated in January. But they lack specific goals and rarely create action plans to achieve those goals. If you need help with any of this, get a coach. This is what good coaching is all about: helping you decide what it is you really want, and then co-creating a plan to help you get it.

In my next article, I'll show you the way to create and achieve your goals. In the meantime, stop wasting your time on those New Year's resolutions. If you want your life to be different, I say you want a revolution.

Alan Stafford, DDS, MBA, MAGD is a certified coach who shows dentists how to create the perfect practice and the perfect life: more time, less stress, more joy. He is also a member of the Dental Coaches Association. Contact Alan at mailto:[email protected] or [email protected]