Welcome to Influence, Psychology and Persuasion Podcast

This is session number 005 of the Influence Psychology and Persuasion podcast. This is very topical as we have just started 2016. Why do nearly 50% of the population set a new years resolution, only 25 % of those who start make it to February and the only 8% are said to achieve their goals?  Here are 7 simple ideas to allow you to stay on track………. This time.

Get specific with the goal/s
Before embarking upon any new challenge or behaviour that you’d like to create, you need to absolutely make sure that your goal is extremely specific. It’s no good simply saying I want to lose weight, or I want to be slim. These give you a slight indication to what you’re working to, however they don’t give you any specific sizes or  timescales in which you want to achieve it. A very specific goal might be I want to lose 2 pounds a week for the first four weeks. Reassess after this point and you can increase or decrease the amount whenever you see fit, as well as been specific make sure it’s realistic because you probably want to lose a pound 8 week for four weeks, but get real. remember, you can’t do don’t therefore setting a goal about things that you don’t want to do, don’t want to achieve, is completely counter-productive. Your brain is goal seeking, and therefore you need to  word your goal is a thing that you are going to do rather than not. If your goal is to not drink wine on Friday night, it could be to drink bottles of soda water on a Friday night..

Get and accountability partner
Having someone you’re accountable to when working on a new goal or challenge is extremely important. Just like reporting into a line manager at work. It seems that when you have someone in your accountable to for achieving a certain goal you’re far more likely to push yourself in those times when you’re really lagging in motivation to do so. We all know the saying, there’s an app for that. And for accountability, there certainly is. Tim Ferris talks about a website called stick STICKK and this is a great website where you can find an accountability partner and even put a wager on the line to further boost motivation and accountability.

Know the end result and why it’s important to you
When you set your goal, your New Year’s resolution makes sure you know you’re “Why”, and why that is important to you. the truth is, you’re why will come from the story you tell yourself about what you want to achieve and why it’s important to you. Spend some time really thinking about what it will be like when you achieve that result. It may be something like you want to read a book a week, so ask yourself questions what will that give you, how would your life improved because of it, what other benefits you think you’ll achieve by doing this? You can even add a bit to the end of that and how would that make me feel if I achieved that? asking yourself questions about the why is a great way to load up motivation and passion about something you’re about to embark upon.

Don’t start your day until you finished it
It is absolutely critical, that you plan each and every day before each and every day. What I mean by this, is planned your following day the night before. Once you’ve planned your day and run through the day in your mind about how it might go how certain achievements once their completed will make you feel, then you’re far more likely to go ahead and stick to that plan. Once your brain has imagined something it’s very easy for that to be absorbed as the default option. But what most of us do, it don’t plan the following day including the new actions and then when motivation is low we begin to question ourselves. What would happen if I didn’t do X? do I really need to do this now? And it’s very easy to create a different reality.

Today is the best day to start
Procrastination is a positivity killer. The very best time to start anything new when you decide that it’s best to you in some way, is right at that given moment. Take a single action towards achieving that goal, it could be something small like downloading an app, calling a gym to find out when the next classes on, or even something as small as taking a note on your phone. It only takes one single step to make a start and it’s far more beneficial to start immediately and make adjustments along the way then is to profusely plan every possible step before the first one is taken. Start today!

The very best way to eat an elephant, is a bit at a time.
In most cases, you will have the ability to make your goal, incremental. Break it down into smaller more achievable parks the perhaps you can reassess on a weekly or monthly basis. This will also give you time to give yourself praise and let you know that you are heading in the right direction.

There is no failure only feedback
As each day passes and you hit these daily milestones, you may feel like you’re really on track, until suddenly you fail. this failure was merely a bump in the road and in most cases it will probably teach you something, simply get back on track and carry on producing just as you’ve done. If your goal is something light weight loss, ruining your diet with a tasty lunch is by no means a failure or reason to ruin your dinner and following days breakfast.