Hey, everybody. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I hope you're ready for the New Year. Today, I've got the perfect topic to help you kick off the New Year. I know you're getting ready for that. You may be even, you know, setting those New Year's resolutions, and so this is going to be important, whether you're setting goals personally or especially if you're setting goals in your business. Okay. So I wanna start by having you imagine that you wanna go on vacation.

You think and you plan and you research. You look up every detail, if you're anything like me. You discuss it with whoever's going with you, and you decide on your destination. Let's just pretend it's a cruise to the Bahamas since we're headed there for the kids' spring break coming up. We've already planned, and we are counting down the days. So I want you to imagine you're counting down the days. You make sure you have your passports, you get everything packed, you head to the port and you board the ship and you start your trip. But, after a day at sea, you decide it's taking too long, and that you wanna try a different way.

So you have a helicopter come pick you up, and you start heading to the Bahamas again, but the helicopter doesn't have enough fuel to make the full trip, and has to make an emergency landing. Then you just decide to abandon the helicopter and you grab a ride to the nearest airport. Once you arrive at the airport, you purchase your flights, you've got your tickets for the next flight out, but it doesn't leave until the next morning. And then the next morning, you show up, there's a mechanical issue with the plane and the flight is delayed. You finally decide just to wait it out instead of changing plans again, and you finally board the plane, head to the Bahamas, And once you land, you make your way to the beautiful beach only to see your cruise ship already docked, and to realize you would have gotten there earlier if you stuck with the original plan. Okay. Maybe that sounds a little crazy. Maybe you wouldn't actually do all of that just to get to a vacation destination, but Entrepreneurs do this all the time when trying to achieve a goal.

They decide on one thing, whether that be their niche, their offer, their pricing, their strategy, but then they change their mind over and over and over, and I've got a few lessons here that you need to learn as you kick off this new year. If you want to make decisions to get a specific result, then you gotta learn to stick with those decisions. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Because decisions without commitment are pointless. Think about it, a decision itself doesn't get you results. If it did, Every New Year's resolution would become a reality. And we know that that is not how it works. In order to get results, you need to follow through.

And to follow through, you need to feel committed. So I want you to think about what you need to think in order to feel committed. Now, one of my clients has a thought that she often uses, and that's, I'm going to work the plan until it works, and I think that's a great thought that helps her stick to her plan, feel committed, and keep going. I also often have to remind clients and myself that we don't actually know if something works until we see it through, so we need to finish it out. And that means I often commit focusing on one goal for an entire quarter. So let's say you decide, you commit, then what? Well, once you decide and commit, your work is not done because you will have the urge to deviate. This is normal. Your brain will offer you alternatives.

It will try to convince you to change your mind, especially when things aren't going as expected, especially when things get a little challenging, especially when you see that someone else created the result you want by doing something different, but changing direction only provides temporary relief. It's very short term. This temporary relief of doing something new, changing the plan, only helps in the short term and it actually sets you back from your long term goal. So when your brain tells you to change directions, Whether it's your niche, your offer, your pricing, your goal, your strategy, your process, or anything else, your job is to allow that urge to change your mind without acting on it. I want you to notice what your brain is doing. You can call it out even. I see you, brain. I know what you're trying to do here.

Right? I don't know if that sounds crazy, but I talk to my brain sometimes. I see what you're doing. I know what you're trying to do. You're not gonna trick me. You can even set a goal and tally up the urges, that you allow without acting on them. What this does is it actually tricks your brain, in a sense by rewarding you for not changing your mind instead of rewarding you with the relief from changing your mind. Okay? So that can be your goal, to actually recognize that you're going to have these urges, allow the urges, Fill them fully, but don't act on them. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but you don't have to indulge in confusion and entertain actually changing your mind.

You can just allow it, recognize it, and then move on. Now, you might be asking, So when is it okay to change the plan? And I wanna be clear that I'm not suggesting that you can never ever change anything in your business. Of course, you need to. Over time, there are strategic decisions that you will make in your business to go a different direction, to change your strategy, but your brain is going to put this spin on a lack of commitment to one thing when it It's a little difficult to try to convince you that you're actually being smart or strategic, so sneaky, our brains. Right? What's worse than not making a decision at all, in my opinion, is making a decision and then changing it before you actually see it through before you know if the decision you made would have actually worked. So that's my criteria for changing directions. 1st, I have to see the 1st decision through fully because often in business, there actually isn't a right or wrong way. There isn't a right or wrong decision.

Either way would work eventually over time. What doesn't work is changing direction and starting over again, right, over and over and over again. So I recommend that you commit to your decision and follow through until you have significant measurable data to make your next informed decision. Now, this doesn't mean giving up if something doesn't work the 1st time. It doesn't mean trying just once saying, oh, I tried it. It didn't work. I have measurable data that I got on this many sales calls and none of them converted, that strategy doesn't work, move on, or, you know, whatever. That's just an example.

If it doesn't work, then that means it's time to troubleshoot. It's time to make some small tweaks and repeat the process again and again. You're not changing the overall strategy. You might just be making very minor tweaks, sometimes even just your own thoughts and not the strategy itself, and then repeat the process again. It is normal for success to take time and repetition. That's something you really need to hear. It is normal for success to take time and repetition. So I want you to think of this like a scientific experiment.

You're going to create a hypothesis. You're going to decide what you're going to try out to get a specific result. You're going to commit to testing it a certain number of times or for a certain number of months. You're gonna collect data and see how it's working, but you're gonna keep going and not until the end of the experiment Do you make a conclusion? You can't decide halfway through if it's working or not. You haven't finished the experiment. So, as you start this new year, don't just make decisions, make commitments. Prepare for the urges to change direction and make sure you see it through so you can make informed decision about your next steps after you know fully whether something worked or not and you have the data to review and analyze.