Welcome to the Pursuit of Calling podcast, pursuers, where my goal and purpose is to
provide you with the tools and strategies needed to successfully discover and pursue
your God-given calling.
I'm your host, Thomas Carney, and today we're debunking the tradition of New Year's resolutions.
Let's dive in.
Okay, so I don't hate New Year's resolutions, but I do think they're misused.
And that's what I'm looking at debunking.
You know, people usually fail their New Year's resolutions because what they generally want
to change are their circumstances and not themselves.
In the article, Five Reasons New Year's Resolutions Fail by Maxwell Leadership, it stated that
people put in just enough effort to distance themselves from their problems without ever
trying to go after the root, which can often be found in themselves.
Because they don't try to change the source of their problems, their problems keep coming
back to them.
So that's why, you know, when you go to the gym, like it's so full at the beginning of
January, and then at the end of February, it's empty again.
Because so many people, they work on changing their circumstances, they get into the gym,
but they don't work on what's internal and work on their mindset.
They don't work on the actual source of the problem when they look into the mirror.
And like that really great example of this is even financially.
Think about people who think the problem that they have is that they don't have enough money.
So they figure out how to change that circumstance so that they can maybe get a raise or they
come in or maybe they win the lottery, or somehow they get some more financial income.
And they think all their problems are solved, and then eventually, those same problems they
had before they didn't have enough money, come back to bite them.
Because what they really didn't understand or realize is that the problem wasn't that
they didn't have enough money, is that their spending habits were poor.
They spent too much money on shoes going out to eat.
And whenever they got more money, that just amplified that kind of lifestyle lifestyle.
So whenever you're thinking about, I think I talked about it on a previous episode.
Instead of looking at changing the circumstances around the problem, try figuring out the root
of it.
And usually the root of the problem is internal and not a lot of people don't like that's
why a lot of people's problems never get solved.
It's because they don't want to look at themselves and seeing that there's something with them
that needs to change.
So what is an alternative?
They are like Thomas, like you're saying you use resolutions.
I'm not saying they don't work.
I'm saying they're misused.
And so, Thomas, what's an alternative?
If they're misused, like how what's a better way to think about these quote unquote resolutions.
So you know, what works best for me, typically, you'd be honest with you is not sending any
actual resolutions at all, and instead deciding to fully commit to personal growth.
The biggest, the biggest issue I have with the New Year's resolution is that a lot of
the time it pushes off growth till the next year.
It says on January 1st, I'll start going to the gym.
And my question is, why not just start going now?
What?
Why wait?
But like, if you actually want to lose weight, if you actually want to get fit, why wouldn't
you just go now?
If you want to, if you want to get more income, why wait to figure that out until next year?
If you want to, if you want to pursue personal growth, why wait to start reading more books
until January 1st, until 2025?
Why not just start today?
I know when this episode comes out, it's essentially it's New Year's Eve.
And it's kind of you can be like Thomas too low too late.
It's tomorrow's 2025.
I get that.
But now I'm saying, but hear me out.
That whatever you are waiting on doing, it's when is this releases at lunchtime around
lunchtime on the 31st of December.
You can just start now.
You don't gotta wait till tomorrow.
You can do it.
I believe in you.
So now obviously you have to do more than just say you're going to grow.
Goals are important.
Having a vision of where you want to go needs to be established.
It needs to be established where you are and where you want to be.
So right now I want you to write down, I'm going to give you a little bit of homework
right now or after the episode.
I want you to write down five things you want to accomplish in 2025.
I want you to make some realistic and honestly some unrealistic goals.
I'm going to tell you why I want you to set some unrealistic goals in a second.
We're going to go more in depth on that.
Give them a timeframe of when you would like to accomplish these goals by and make it quantitative.
Give it a numeric value of some sort.
It gives it some sort of value so that you know how close you are to accomplishing this
goal.
So in Maxwell leadership, they call this the beginning of your growth plan.
Next you want to establish the systems that are going to help you get from where you are
to where you want to be.
So what habits do you want to stop?
I'm going to stop real quick and go back and say, I said systems.
A lot of people say your goals are not as important as your systems.
Your systems are more important than your goals.
So what habits because it's the habits that some people say, show me your habits and I'll
show you your future.
Show me what you're doing every single day and I'll show you your future.
So what habits do you need to stop?
What habits do you need to start?
These can and will replace the ones that you're removing.
So let's make sure I'm not just talk and let's make sure you know, I'm not just make sure
I'm not just talking out of my butt.
I'm going to show you that I practice what I preach.
So here's some of my 2025 growth plan to give you some examples and maybe get your juices
flowing on what goals you can be setting for yourself.
So you know how I said to set unrealistic goals.
I'm being 100% serious.
I want you to set the most unrealistic goal that you can think of.
You might be thinking Thomas if they're unrealistic, why would I try to achieve it?
And it that's because and I thought about this, oh man, it hit me and I was like, wow,
this is so cool.
Where you what you think is unrealistic now can be might be realistic at the end of the
year.
What you think what is realistic now is going to change.
It's going to if you're really on a path of personal growth, then what is realistic at
the end of the year is going to be exponentially more than what's realistic now.
So put down in something that you think is unrealistic and work towards that goal.
Create the systems that you create the systems to achieve it.
And even if you don't, you're going to get way closer than you would have gotten.
If you didn't set that goal in the first place.
So set an unrealistic goal that make that one of your five.
So my unrealistic goal is become pain free for a month in 2025.
That's my quantitative part a month.
So even if I'm not pain free for a week, a day, a week, a few days, that doesn't count.
It doesn't count for me accomplishing the goal.
What counts?
What that does count towards though is saying if I'm if I go for a week without being pain
with with being pain free, that means I got 25% of the way towards my goal.
And like this needs to be a straight month.
So and the way that I'm going to do this, I have the systems I have in place right now
are doing one of the really the only one I have actually in place for being honest is
doing morning stretches.
I guess honestly started that today I set on I set a whenever turn off my morning alarm,
my dot my my echo dot almost woke it up.
Says after turn off my alarm, it tells me it tells me any reminders and then it tells
me hey Thomas, remember to do your morning stretches.
I do my morning stretches because that's something that a lot of people with just only recommend
to do to help alleviate their pain or at least reduce that a little bit.
So that's one thing I'm doing, but also to do some research in the Sonia subreddit, ask
people what they're doing.
And I'm going to start putting a research schedule onto my calendar and and start a
research of what I can be doing to get myself to the point where I could be pain free for
a month.
Now some people might some people will hear that and think Thomas, you can't do that.
Some people say it's not possible to heal muscular dystonia.
And I say screw that.
I don't care if it's unrealistic.
We're going to figure it out.
If what one person says it unrealistic is realistic to somebody else that happens everywhere
all over the place.
So let's figure that out.
Okay, that's my own realistic goal.
Let's keep moving.
So actually, no, even if I don't become pain free, I want to say this, I still have hope
because because of my faith in God, because because my faith in Jesus Christ, I know that
because of my pain, I've become a man that I would have never become.
I know that sometimes I know that sometimes I'm going to worry, but I know at those times
I have somebody I can lean on when I do worry.
I can lean on on Christ.
I can lean on Christ.
I can give him my worries and my pain and I just really just rest in his peace in those
moments and to be reminded that my pain has a purpose.
It's a great episode that I talked about from growth pain to purpose.
If you want to go back and listen to that one.
So let's go to my next goal.
Now, I'm going to read or take notes on at least 300 pages a month within books for my
own personal development, not books I read for fun.
You know, I'm going to be you want to be concise with these goals.
So that doesn't give you any will groom.
I was reading my goal out after I wrote down.
It's like that could mean because yesterday I read one book about by Tony Robbins called
Life, Life Force.
Definitely recommend it.
But then I read that for about 20, 30 minutes.
And then after I was done reading that, I read some of the Chronicles of Narnia.
Now I love that book.
I read that for probably an hour, if I'm being honest.
And that was like, that's my kind of my nighttime routine for me.
And but that doesn't count towards this goal.
That doesn't count towards the habit I want to accomplish.
So I'm saying the goal is a goal that I set every month to read at least 300 pages a month
with it within books of my for my own personal development.
So I'm saying this because some books I say 300 pages specifically because some books
are longer, some books are shorter.
So I want to make this a realistic goal.
That is about 10 pages a day is the habit I'm establishing.
And that's at minimum because I can read more than 10 pages in a day.
Some days I won't have time to read.
But if I can read some, if I can read on average at minimum 10 pages a day, I don't even say
I don't have time to read.
I have time to read 10 pages.
I can do that.
So 10 pages a day at minimum.
I'm done rambling on that.
Let's move to the next one.
I want to be able to have a full five minute conversation in Japanese by the end of the
end of the year.
So I want to continue to do at least I want to continue to do at least one lesson of Japanese
a day.
You know, I want to just maybe I probably gonna need to switch the apps I use to establish
better systems.
And that's what I got for that one.
So I want to have 1000 listeners by the end of 2025.
So that means I need to consistently prepare and record one podcast episode each week.
And I need to reach out to a minimum of two petitions of podcast guests each week.
There's other things I can be doing, but they're more like one off things like establishing
getting my MailChimp set up to better for automations.
But like that doesn't go into the habits part of this.
So then the next thing, my last one is have 52 people coached by the end of 2025.
That goes along with the podcast to get people into more people listening to put more people
here about the coaching.
Also, the habit can establish is reach out to an on average three people a week to provide
them with a free coaching session.
So there's other avenues that feed that as well.
So that's five.
I have one more just grow my personal by professional network by at least five people a month through
the coaching.
And the guys that is kind of where my mind has been at the end of this year, I've been
thinking about how I want 2025 to go.
And I want to have a thriving personal development brand called the pursuit of calling.
So that's my plan for 2025.
It's probably going to be more these goals might even change, change and mature as the
year goes, year goes on.
But this is what I have right now.
You want to go you want to go in with the end in mind.
You want to establish these goals right now you want to think about the systems that you
the systems that you're going to take you from where you are to where you want to be.
And then you need to hold yourself accountable to those goals.
A great way to do that, honestly, is to have is to hire a coach.
So if you are interested in a free coaching call, you can actually go you can click the
link in the description to sign up for your free initial coaching call.
Guys I'm really excited to be with some of you.
Thank you for listening to the rest.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the pursuit of calling podcast.
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I'll see you next time.