It's March - Are you still working on behavior changes?

Today is the 1st Monday of the 3rd month of 2016.

By now, you should have your 1st goal on your New Year's resolution soundly planted in your life. If you have been working on the behaviors leading up to achieving that first goal then you have had 9 weeks to accomplish those tasks. Now you should be ready for that second goal.

If this is the first blog post you have read on this subject, then you'll have to go back and re-read the series. You see, I'm a firm believer that to reach the goals of our New Years Resolutions we have to work on the behaviors that drive the goals. On January 4th, I wrote a post about not focusing on the goals, but changing the behaviors.  If you need to, go back and review that post and then come back here.

In February, I wrote a post about picking up the hitchhiking resolutions. Picking up those goals that you self-determined would cost too much, you didn't have time to meet, were too hard to manage, or that took you too far outside of your comfort zone. I gave you three suggestions on how to pick up those goals and start over so that you could enhance your life and be better able to reach the pinnacle you had set for yourself. If you still have those hitchhiking resolutions, you need to go pick them up, re-read that post, and then come back here.

And so here we are. March. For those who have been working on those behaviors, getting them aligned with your goals, then you are well on your way to achieving that list of New Years Resolutions. Today, you need to start working on Goal #2.

Remember, we aren't going to let Goal #1 sit on the sideline. We are going to continue to do whatever behavior you had determined to change or do in order to reach that goal and we are going to add new behavior changes. Yes, these are baby steps in goal achievement. That's OK. Research has shown over and over that those who change small behaviors related to larger goals are more successful than those who change many behaviors at once.

So, once again, here we go. Take your Goal #2 from your New Years Resolution list and ...

1. Review where you are on the trajectory to Goal #1. Do you have some behavior changes to still make? Do you have to tweak some of those changes? Are you well on your way to accomplishing that goal? Make sure you are being reasonable and don't be so willing to make huge changes that will throw you off your game. Small, easily adaptable changes are the best. Those that take you out of your comfort zone a little but without plopping you into another country will be the most successful.

2. Determine what behaviors need to change to accomplish goal #2. Make the behavior changes small and incremental - what can you do in the next 30 days to change some of your behaviors that will ultimately get you to that goal. If you've already started to change some of those behaviors with the advancement of Goal #1 - GREAT! Overlapping behavior changes reinforces that those changes stay in place.

The most important thing to remember in this process is that we are the turtle and not the hare in this race. We know that small incremental changes will ultimately bring us to the finish line in December. Focus on the behavior(s) that will bring the most change and work on those.

3. Do not allow your criticism of yourself to be the biggest roadblock to meeting your goals. We are our own worst critic. Give yourself the time that you need to make changes. Your changes aren't always in a linear path? You veer off the path here and there throughout the month? So what,  it doesn't matter. The overall focus needs to be on the big picture - have you changed your behavior in such a way that you are closer to your goal today than you were yesterday? If the answer is yes ---- give yourself a pat on the back, pick up the pieces that have strayed, and get back on the road. If the answer is no --- OK, do the same, pick up the pieces that you dropped along the way, make a conscious decision to commit to change, and get back on the road.

Above all, realize that you are the only one standing between you and your accomplishment. Focus on the behavior change you need to make. Make this the restart and get going.

Have a great Monday!