How to Make Resolutions You Actually Follow Through

Next up is Mithuvil talking about New Year's resolutions, so that's timely here. He says he's trying to change his approach this year to focus on not making a list of resolutions, but making a list of mistakes and explanations to look at why he's not— why he didn't follow through on making those plans and fixing the mistakes from last year. What are our thoughts, and how do you go about making resolutions or even do you for the new year?

You know, for the new year, I'm going to try one thing, Evan, because I'm so conscious. Um, I, I, I bust my own chops, I'll be honest. I, I demand a lot from myself. Um, I never think when I look at myself I've done well enough, and that's kind of deeply ingrained in my psyche, I think. And this is advice I'd give to everybody. Um, when you look at yourselves, we've got great people today joined us for the blab. I think I'm going to try in the new year to say, not for me, but for other people, just look for the good things they did. And it's almost back to sports. You know, if you're competing against kind of, I don't know, say Usain Bolt for the 100 meters, do you beat yourself up all the time on that 100th of a second where you don't come out the blocks? Or do you celebrate the things that you do well in the last 50 meters where you accelerate away from everybody else in the field? I think we should, as leaders, focus way more on the things we do well and make them even better. And if we do that, I think we'll find we make less mistakes. And also any sort of improvements we need, you could call them whatever you want really, we've all got weaknesses. But if you accentuate the positives, if you accentuate, and if you've got people working for you in your businesses, if you just give them a bit of praise about what efforts they put into achieving something, that was connected to your big passion and dream and idea, then wow, you'll make them rise 40,000 foot and fly out of your home office and they'll be able to rule the world. And I think so often when I look at, and I say this for myself in terms of one learning for me, it's so easy to, you know, say, oh, you did this okay, but I want to tell you about these 3 things that you didn't do so good. And the voice in your head, because a lot of overcoming the fear is smashing down the walls and smashing those voices that tell you you can't do stuff, because you know you can. You know you can. And if you keep on listening to the voices around you or in your head, they'll just grind you down and you kind of lose the will to live. So I do think actually, both for yourself, it's really good to celebrate the positive, savor the moment. But most of all, if you've got You know, you're a company of 2, 3, 5 people. Wouldn't it be powerful when you won a big order to take everybody out for dinner and just celebrate that, enjoy it, and say, "Your contribution was this, and if we hadn't won that—" You know, maybe a pitch, or it may be the product they invented, or whatever. It's so powerful to galvanize the people together against your passion for your dream. And I think— so if one thing I do is, in terms of the New Year's resolution, Yeah, okay, spend maybe 20% of your time when you do that on the one mistake, but actually spend 80% of your time on the things you did really, really well. And then you become a super trained athlete to do them ever better. And, you know, focus on the positive.

To Stephen's point, I would encourage you to not just wait till the New Year's resolution to come around to start doing it. Like, if Stephen inspired you with that story about celebrating the win, then today is the resolution. Like, do it right now. So many people wait until the new year to start something, and then they fall off track a couple weeks in. I would love for you guys listening and watching, for entrepreneurs, to when you get an idea, just go out and try it. Like, even if you don't know all the details, right? So I want to celebrate a win. Okay, great. Is it going to be at a restaurant? Is it going to be with a gift certificate? Are we going to like— you start getting, you start planning all the things out. The perfectionist in us plan all the things out. We make it some big thing. And then because it's so big, we never do it. 'Cause that's to be the perfect thing and we never do anything. And I think just starting something small, it could be a phone call, it could be someone taking somebody out, it could be just buying them a Starbucks, whatever. Just try something, see how it feels and adjust. And I would love for you guys to get in the habit of constantly doing a self-evaluation and checking yourself and not waiting until New Year's or your birthday or some other arbitrary day. Like, just start doing it. You get inspired by something you hear today, take action. I mean, that would make both Stephen and myself insanely happy. That's the goal, right? Don't wait another couple of weeks. Do something today.

Yeah, I think Evan as well. That's such a great point. And, you know, another great quote: Never leave till tomorrow what could be done today. And I think, you know, why wait to the new year? This is a great holiday season. And for you guys who have got customers out there, and if you got, you know, people working for you, colleagues that work for you and follow your dream, what a golden time to say a really heartfelt thank you in the holiday season. It's sort of the time to pause, reflect. They're going to go home with their families or, you know, friends. And it's a really, a pretty cool time to pick up the phone to customers, Send them an SMS or a direct message just saying, you know, thank you so much for your custom over this year. I'm really excited about working with you again in 2017. So it's a great time, not just the new year, but the end of the year, just to celebrate what you've achieved this year. You know, recognize a few of the people, like especially your customers and the people who have built that, which is the people you employ. And just say thank you very much. It's a good time, and I think everybody wants to feel valued, and the more you do that, again, it is kind of weird, there's this flywheel of positivity, because if you say that to your colleagues and you say that to your customer, they're feeling the love for your big idea, and they'll give you great feedback.