- I cannot believe 2018 is right around the corner.
This year absolutely flew by.
Now is the time that I know a lot of you are getting ready
to make some New Year's resolutions,
but what I'm gonna do is share
how to make the perfect New Year's resolution
in the smartest way possible.
Let's check it out.
Before I jump into the meat of this video,
let's make two important points
very clear right off the bat.
Number one,
you do not need to wait for the new year
to set a goal for yourself.
Goals are important
to have in your life
because they bring happiness,
and they keep your mind and body healthy.
The second point is that before you set a goal
or a New Year's resolution for yourself,
you have to know yourself.
I mean, that's just a principle I live-- swear by,
pretty much center my whole life around.
I have it tattooed on my back.
That's how passionate I am about knowing yourself.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses allows you
to set goals that you're not only gonna be more likely
to reach, but when you reach them,
they're gonna be that much more fruitful.
I'm gonna introduce you to a statistic
that probably won't surprise you,
but it's still pretty powerful.
88% of New Year's resolutions fail.
Now a lot of you may say that's because of laziness.
It's not.
It's really because when people set goals for themselves,
when you set a goal for yourself they're too vague.
That's why I like to introduce a formula
called the S.M.A.R.T method.
It allows you to create and structure your goals
in a way that's not only specific and attainable, but smart.
If you haven't guessed S.M.A.R.T is an acronym,
yeah you smartass.
Let's start, this is a writing exercise,
so break out a piece of paper and a pen.
Or you could just use a notepad
in your phone, that's totally fine.
Your goal should be as specific as possible,
you should put in every little detail
so you can better visualize your goal.
In addition, you should write down why you want
to achieve that goal, not only will it help
you set your goal more accurately,
but it'll allow you to look back as time goes on
and get an added boost of motivation.
For example, I do wanna bench press more,
but it's not enough to just write down
that I wanna bench press more.
What I should say is that I wanna bench 315 pounds
for a single rep, because I feel like it'll show
that I'm making progress at the gym, that's a specific goal.
Set measurable goals for yourself,
because if you don't measure your goals
how will you know if you're on track to succeeding?
Are you gonna measure how much weight you'll lose?
Are you gonna measure how many more pounds you're benching?
Are you gonna measure how many days
a week you're volunteering?
Set an attainable goal for yourself.
And this is where it becomes key to know yourself.
Because you wanna set a goal that's challenging
but not too challenging that it's discouraging.
Shooting foul shots in basketball could be fun, right?
Because you shoot some shots, you miss some,
you make some, but it's attainable.
Now imagine walking to the back of the court
and shooting full court, literally lobbing the ball,
never making a single bucket, that's never gonna be any fun.
In fact, setting attainable goals for yourself is part
of the principle within positive psychology.
You need to set these little goals,
not even for New Year's resolutions
but throughout the day, throughout the week.
That's how you keep yourself happy.
Set a relevant goal for yourself.
I've seen some people use the R for realistic goals
but I don't like that because I feel like
it's too similar to attainable goals.
Relevant is much more meaningful, and again,
finds it's root in positive psychology.
When you set a relevant goal to yourself,
it matches along with your values,
it brings meaning to you, that's why I had you write down
why you want to reach your goals
because now your goal is becoming relevant to you.
I wanna read at least 10 medical journal articles a week,
and how is that relevant to me?
Because I'm a doctor, it'll help me every single day
when I'm treating my patients.
Make your goal time-based.
Not only should you set yourself a time limit,
say lose 10 pounds in the next month.
But instead say that you're gonna
lose two and half pounds each week,
that way you can set milestones for yourself
and every time you reach a milestone,
you get an extra celebration.
That's the S.M.A.R.T method,
and I know many people have anxiety
about setting goals or reaching goals for themselves
and there are really two types of anxiety.
You have bad anxiety and good anxiety.
The good anxiety is the type of stress
that comes about to get you ready to face a challenge,
to get you ready to meet your goal and reach your goal.
For example, if I'm going on television
and my heart rate goes up and I start sweating,
that's good anxiety, that's my body
getting ready to answer questions.
Same thing happens when you get ready for a test.
Now bad anxiety is when you go home
at night and you worry about
how you're gonna achieve your goals in the future.
That's not good, healthy anxiety.
That's when you should be mindful and take a moment
and understand why you feel that anxiety.
Something that helps me often is
to write down my worry and figure out what the best
and worst case scenario of the outcome might be.
And when you do that you can visualize your anxiety
and it becomes less stressful.
Now what to do if you get thrown off track,
I mean this happens to everyone, it happens to me,
life is crazy, I get it, there's obstacles in your way,
unexpected events occur.
The way that I tell people to deal with this is
by understanding the way the human body works.
And I know that's a funny way to think about it
but the way that the human body works and the way
that the human body gets better with time.
For example, if you're learning how to play basketball
or learning any new sport for that matter,
your skill in that goes up with the amount
of hours that you spend in that sport.
But after time you'll plateau,
or maybe you've done it too much to the point
where you drop off your talents a little bit.
But it's important to know that
if you keep putting in the time
and you keep putting in that effort,
your end result is gonna keep going up and up and up and up.
So don't worry if you take one step back,
in the end if you keep putting in
that effort you'll take two more steps forward.
I wanna close on a great quote I read
and I'm probably gonna mess it up
because I'm not reading it but "It's much better
"to put in 100% effort with 20% of a plan,
"than it is to put 20% effort into a 100% plan."
Effort is what's important, so give it your all
when you're chasing your goals.
Stay happy and healthy.
Stay happy, happy, happy.
You could always look back at your memo
and get an added boost of moti... Vation.
What did I just do?
Hey guys, before you click on one of these videos
I wanna give you a huge thank you
for making this channel what it is.
It means so much to me that you not only
watch these videos but you like and share them.
Thanks for an amazing year and I can't wait for 2018.