SNS 126: Saturday Night Special - Happy New Year

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 126.

[00:00:05] Mike Flynn: Hey, this is Mike Flynn, and it's been an honor to be here with you all. I challenge you to invest in yourself, to invest in others, to develop your influence and impact the world using your time, your talent and your treasure to live out your.

[00:00:23] Having the ability to master the key master who you are created to be is vital. And one major way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:38] Scott Maderer: if you do this, when you're setting goals, you are much more likely to last beyond February 14th and to actually be one of those people that actually changes their life, where you look up December of next year. And those things that you have said about to. Are completely different. You [00:01:00] look back on that year and you go, how did this happen?

[00:01:03] How did I come so far in a year? Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your. For your true color in the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:32] In tonight Saturday night, special. I talk with you about the new year coming. I talk about why new year's resolutions often don't work. And I also talk about what you can do. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be [00:02:00] really.

[00:02:01] I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personnel.

[00:02:30] Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that in productivity for your passion.

[00:02:50] Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash law. If you're listening to this, when it came out, it's new year's [00:03:00] day. This is a day that we often look at as a chance for new beginnings. We talk a lot about new year's resolutions and try to set them to make the year of 20, 22 so much better than the year.

[00:03:16] That was the last year. That's true. Whether it was a great year or a bad year, we always want the next year to be better. And one thing I want to share with you is if you're not listening to this, when it first came out, if you're listening to it later, it's still worth listening to, because we have a tendency to think about things like resolutions, not just at the new year.

[00:03:38] But we often do it throughout the year. And I want to talk a little bit about that and why this doesn't always work. And some of the things you can do instead. So some of the most common new year's resolutions that people. Include exercising, more losing weight, getting organized, learning a new skill or a [00:04:00] new hobby or a new something that they can do.

[00:04:03] Living life to their fullest. I love that one. Save more money or spend less money or invest more money. Quit smoking. Spend more time with family and friends travel more. The interesting thing is a lot of those are areas that I work with people because of the coaching I do around stewardship around time, talent and treasures, that overlaps with a lot of these areas.

[00:04:28] But notice some commonalities here, a lot of these are very general. They're nonspecific live life to the fullest. If you don't actually dive in and figure out what that looks like and what that means for you, how do you actually eat? Achieve that. And in fact, a lot of studies show that when people set new year's resolution, about 80% of the people fail to follow through by February, by the way, you can see evidence of that.

[00:04:56] How many people join a gym in [00:05:00] January, go January and you can't get a machine in a gym, but by Valentine's day in February, all of a sudden, a lot of those machines open up because. People have dropped off and stopped coming. Gyms realize a lot of their income in January, but then those people by March, aren't coming, and a lot of the resolutions that we talked about, you end up dropping off of them. Why is that? First off, a lot of times, resolutions, like I just pointed out are these broad sweeping things. You try to change your entire life overnight. You want to change everything about. Sometimes you don't believe that you can achieve these kinds of goals.

[00:05:45] You doubt yourself. In fact, if you haven't achieved new year's resolutions before you usually go into them with this attitude of one more year of trying, but it's not going to work this year. You may know in theory how to do [00:06:00] something, but you haven't actually developed the practice of it. You haven't actually done the exercise that allows you to follow through on doing it.

[00:06:09] So you haven't really built up that kind of muscle memory of how to do these sorts of things. You often look at the resolutions that you set as just a task you have to do. They're not fun. They're not aspirational. They're not, you don't have a big why for them, they're just suffering or pain that you have to do because you've got to get healthier.

[00:06:33] You've got to lose weight, or you've got to, even the phrasing is often a half, two instead of a want to, you often keep your resolutions secret and don't tell anyone, and you don't have any sort of system of accountability. And again, what I just referenced you often don't have a big, why that you've connected and resolutions are often way too vague and not real [00:07:00] specific.

[00:07:00] And they don't have any real action plan built in around them. So what are some of the things you can do instead if new year's resolutions don't work. If those are challenging for most of us to follow through on what are some of the things we can do. Instead, you can ask yourself, what is the smallest next step that I can take that would move me towards that goal.

[00:07:26] So instead of trying to lose weight, what can I do today and tomorrow, and the next day, that's a relatively small thing that would help me achieve that goal. It may be as simple as stop buying potato chips at the grocery store. Try to turn the resolutions into commitments, into things that you will do, and you want to do, be able to take consistent action each and every day set up a plan that allows you to do something [00:08:00] repeatedly and emphasize and attach rewards and things that you really want.

[00:08:06] To following through on these commitments, share them with others, build an accountability team, whether that's a coach or whether that's other people in your life, family and friends build a team that will cheer you on and we'll call you. We'll observe what you're doing and we'll actually help you achieve them.

[00:08:26] Be specific about why you want to achieve those commitments. Really break it down and talk about what it looks like, what it feels like. What does it actually entail? Build an action plan and prepare to fail. And when you do fail immediately get back on the horse. And try again because the truth is you're probably not going to follow through on everything that you've set yourself to do.

[00:08:54] That's why it's also important to keep your goals down to a manageable amount, [00:09:00] break them into those smaller goals. And then when you do break the list or when you don't manage to do with that time, Get right back on the horse, if there's ways that you can automate and encourage yourself to do it and make it more automatic, that helps as well.

[00:09:18] And then the most important thing is be very clear about your, why, what is the big, emotional reason behind what you're doing? Why is this important to you? And I don't just mean from a goal perspective or from a surface perspective. How does this improve and change your life? How does it make your life better for you, for the people you care about for every part of your life?

[00:09:47] How has it tied to all of the components of your life? If you do this, when you're setting goals, you are much more likely to last beyond February 14th and to actually be one of those [00:10:00] people that actually changes their life, where you look up December of next year. And those things that you have set about to do are completely different.

[00:10:11] You look back on that year and you go, how did this happen? How did I come so far in a year? And by the way, again, if you're listening to this and it isn't new years, you could do this on any day. Today could be your new year's day, the day that you sat down and set some specific goals that have a deep why behind them.

[00:10:33] So that. 365 days from today. You end up looking and recognizing that you've completely changed your life. Thanks for listening.

[00:10:45] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively. But act on what you've heard and find a way [00:11:00] to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.

[00:11:13] All one. ITunes rate, it'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.