As you prepare to wave goodbye to yet another year and greet 2009 with hopefully a sense of optimism and excitement, I’m betting that you’ve got a goal or two up your sleeve for the New Year, haven’t you, you cheeky monkey?

It may or may not be a New Years resolution per se. In fact, it may not even be written down, but I bet there’s something lurking in the nether reaches of your beautiful mind.

Some goal, or personal changes that would make you feel good if you achieved it in 2009.

It could be quitting smoking, losing a bit of weight, running g a 10k race, spending more time with people that are important to you (hint: that probably isn’t your boss) or even stamping out world hunger by mid- March.

It’s not my spooky otherworld Life Coach mind reading skills that tell me I’m almost certainly right.  It’s simply the fact that the end of year causes many people to take stock and at least temporarily, reflect on their life. Especially wise folk like you that already take the time and effort to read self-development blogs like this one.

I applaud your desire to make improvements in your life and I give you a hearty cyber pat on the back by way of moral support. The sad fact is though that statistically speaking you’re almost certainly doomed to failure before you’ve even started. I know that’s tough, but hey don’t shoot the messenger.

I have seen various figures quoted as to how many people succeed in making lasting change with new years resolutions and it’s never more than about 5% and those odds stink.

Wow, that’s a bit of a downer of a blog opening coming from a smiley, happy Life Coach. I bet your wondering why you stopped by to read that steaming pile of negativity, right? Well leave that back button alone for a second. Because today we’re going to talk about some of the fundamentals in helping you stack the odds in your favor and make sure you are one of the smug 5%.

There’s an old saying that goes “If nothing changes, nothing changes” and it perfectly describes the situation for most people setting new years resolutions. Trying harder to do something that has normally failed is not as likely to yield success as you might imagine. It can occasionally, but as a rule in these situations it becomes a law of diminishing returns and just delivers increased levels of frustration.

To make lasting change you need to do something significantly different which is the thing that many people seem to miss. By following the advice in this post I will guarantee you’ll increase your likelihood of achieving your goals this year by at least 10,000%. I have no idea how I came to that figure, what it means or even how I’m going to guarantee it, but who cares it’s the thought that counts.

Write It Down

I’m almost embarrassed to be typing this. Almost, but not quite that is. I can’t even be bothered to explain why written goals are exponentially more likely to come to fruition than goals that are just floating round your head.

Trust me, they just are. It’s been demonstrated so many times it would be akin to me explaining why warming your ass over the Old Faithful geyser as it’s about to blow isn’t a great idea.

So if you already know that, why haven’t you written your goals down? (If you have written goals, please forgive my outrageous presumption and move on with my blessings to the next juicy segment on changing your identity)

If you can’t spare 45 to 60 minutes to sit down and write down what it is that’s important to you, then it can’t be that important.

This is an essential stage that people nearly always leave out. Don’t be one of those lost souls. Block out an hour in your planner to sit down and go through your dreams and aspirations and you’ll look back on that time at the end of 2009 as the best hour you spent.

If you need help setting good goals that are likely to work, then either watch How To Set Goals on video or if you prefer, you can read about SMARTER Goals here.

During this time also pay special attention to thinking about your sense of purpose because it’s that’s what will keep you motivated if and when times get tough.

Setting goals should be fun and not a chore. This is the rest of your life you’re planning out here, if you can’t get excited about it then you really need to do some serious navel gazing and shoe staring.

Change Your Identity

If you see yourself as a smoker, how difficult do you think it will be to quit smoking? If you see yourself as a fat person just trying to lose a bit of weight, how testing and difficult will that be?

The ability to change your identity and never be attached to any one identity is one of the most under-rated skills in personal development. It’s also one that anybody can acquire if they really want to. You too can decide what identity you want to embrace.

Your identity is not your job, it’s not your dress size, it’s not your kids, it’s not your friends and fortunately for me it’s not your favorite sports team. All of those contribute to who you are as a person, but that’s all they do, just contribute to the much greater whole.

If I lose the ability to hear tomorrow coaching would be a tad tricky. In fact in the short-term it would be more or less impossible.

That would be a bummer because I like the sound of my own voice and I love what I do. I also realize that it could be taken off me at a moments notice and therefore if I attach my identity to being a life coach, what happens then? Do I lose my identity; do I have to build another one or am I just, albeit temporarily, a nobody?

Of course the answer to all those questions is no. I’m still the same person I was before. Ok, I now have the TV volume a tad on the high side and I’ve taken to shouting a lot, but I’m still me. That’s because my job can never equal my identity.

If you’re trying to change a behavior the single biggest thing you can do to ensure success is to change your identity. Using weight loss as an example. If you refuse to see yourself as a fat person, but concentrate all your efforts into believing you are by nature a slim person temporarily in a fat persons body, what effect do you think that’ll have?

All of a sudden your internal image is directly in conflict with what you are viewing when you hop on the scales. In your mind you’re a healthy weight and that sets up an uncomfortable disconnect between what you see and what you believe about yourself.

Fortunately your unconscious mind doesn’t like disconnects and it will go to work on your behalf to help you meet your internal picture.

If you transform your identity and the way you view yourself, making changes will be a snap because you’ll not spending all your energy on fighting your own belief system.

There are a number of things you can do to help such as being aware of the language you use to describe yourself to others and to yourself. And routinely doing something that breaks with how you currently view yourself can be very helpful. An example of that may be if you see yourself as a shy person, committing to joining group activities on a regular basis.

Visualize

The most effective way bar none though is to employ visualization as a tool for changing how you see yourself. Visualization works!

This is not woo-woo stuff; it’s a tried and trusted method of making permanent successful change.

Imagine walking home from a new job one day. You suddenly realize there is a meadow of long grass you could use to cut 20 minutes off your walk. (If you live in New York, you’re going to need a great imagination for this one.)

The first time few times you walk through the meadow, you can barely see which way you had walked the previous day. However, after 10 or 20 times passing through the field, you can clearly see a pathway starting to form. After 100 times all the grass is worn away.

Then one day there’s a farmer with a shotgun and large dog waiting for you at the end of the path.

Now, let’s presume our gun-toting friend is a big softy and he allows you to use that route as long as you want.

What are the odds that the next time you walk through the meadow, you take a slightly different direction? Slim to none would be my guess. After all, you know this path works and you have a lovely, easy trail to navigate. Why risk taking another way?

On the other hand, if Farmer Giles starts taking pot shots at you and sportingly lets the dog try to shoot you as well before releasing it to sink its gnashers into your rear end, then you’ll probably find a new way home once released from hospital. You opt against reacquainting yourself with Fido.

The next time you walk home, you spot another meadow further along the road. The same process begins to occur. Only this time, the original path you created in the last meadow has started to grow back. That is pretty much what happens when we form thoughts in our mind.

The first time we have a new thought; it is a weakling that gets sand kicked in its face by stronger thoughts and beliefs. Each time you re-think the thought, though, it grows in strength as the physical pathway becomes better defined.

Not only that, but if the new thought is a belief that contradicts one that you currently hold, the older belief starts to atrophy and die.

This helps explain why we tend to have the same thoughts repeatedly and why people often have difficulty snapping negative loops of thinking. The pathway is established. It’s just easier than trying to think about something new to form a new connection in the brain.

Visualization is an incredibly successful and simple way of speeding up the process. It fools the unconscious into believing that you have already done something before you have done it.

Review

Writing down goals is brilliant. Reviewing them on a regular basis is brillianterer. Your goals should be dynamic and never set in stone. Check in with them to inspire, invigorate and motivate yourself. Thinking you’re ‘failing’ or success isn’t coming as easily as expected is not an excuse to avoid looking at your goals or quitting on them altogether.

Reframe any negative thoughts. If you’re not doing as well as you’d like, see the results you’re getting as feedback, because that is exactly what they are. Without feedback either negative or positive we’d never know when to make changes and what changes to make.

Try and review where you are at least once a month or even weekly. Don’t go nuts though and become obsessed with measuring every parameter in sight. You’ll have good days and you’ll have bad says, that’s just how it is and it’s the overall long-term trend that is all that matters.

You can make the changes you want to make and you can start to make them whenever you’re ready to do so, that much is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether you’ll bother to do so, or whether all your great intentions end us as being just that and this time next year we’re having the same conversation.

What new years resolutions do you have? Let us know in the comments field and use it to kick start the process now.