5 Levels of Resolution to Achieve Anything You Want

It’s the 3rd week of the New Year.

Aside from Omicron, is it “new”?

One of the things I thought to share with you is the current idea of change in a business or in life.

The reason why people set resolutions is because they wish for something of the future.

According to the Dictionary, resolution is defined as “a firm decision to do or not to do something”. I don’t see anything wrong with that definition other than the fact that such is a “low-resolution” resolution. This is the meaning of resolution we see in the Dictionary also as “the smallest interval measurable by a telescope or other scientific instrument” such as “the degree of detail visible in a photographic or television image”.

The higher your resolution of your resolution, the more likely it will work as a change mechanism for your business and life.

What do I mean?

First, you have to clarify the “what”. What do you want? This is usually starts off vaguely, but I always recommend the process of Life Visioning to do this. A resolution like this is simple to write. Say, you want “$250,000 of revenue this year”. Great.

Second, still on the plane of “whats”, you have to dive deep into uncovering the specifics in your behavior. What exactly do you need to do in order for this what to get uncovered? This is the tricky part. Most people fail at this level of resolution, which causes a blockage to the cascade of success. This is also the reason why people want to hire coaches. They know that if their process is limited, they waste a lot of time “trialling and erroring” to get some semblance of success. Not only that, without high resolution clarity on the what, the actions taken are likely to result in more error than action. In a world where resources are unlimited, that’s fine. But there’s only so much money, time and energy you have. 

We all know that the human psychology is fascinating. It is also highly complex. This is where all my decades of learning in psychology have helped me not just to be good at managing my coachee’s mindsets, I can see their growth gaps in the leadership of their business. As a coach, my primary enabler is helping my coachees define their inner strategy to achieve their outer strategy. 

Third, a different plane of “what”, refers to what kinds of beliefs will serve the activity. When you are answering the question of “what belief”, a lot of people say you need to answer “why”. I think the “why” is often very simple and possibly flippant. I’ve spoken to resilient individuals who often say that their “why” was simply to go for the next challenge. Others simply tell me it’s just for fun. So, I’m convinced that the why is more important in shaping your inclination to the “what” in the first place. So you have to list down the beliefs that support your behaviors.

Let’s take a look at my fitness journey (don’t laugh).

1. What did I want vaguely? 

To look better. See, very simplistic.

2. What did I have to do?

This I struggled with. I could get an exercise routine, but I didn’t have much instruction about nutrition. So I ended up making a mistake in my nutrition, causing me to balloon to 85kgs at my peak, when my average then was 75kg. I started getting my first dose of reality, so I had to study all the behavioral “whats” to get higher resolution. It was frustrating, and tedious. Reading labels, understanding diet strategy, understanding human anatomy and functions of different organs. After I knew this, I could see the system, and gradually adjusted my efficiency. The inertia was the huge amount of information.

The breakthrough came in my application of cognitive programming skills where I can go inside my mind and adjust the mental programming I have to make the struggle joyful. That’s why I encourage people who don’t know neurolinguistic programming to learn it, and those who know it to apply it everyday.

3. What beliefs support my actions?

I had to stack this by making a list daily in my mind. I call this “mindsetting“.

What do I believe that supports my objective?

– I am a fast learner.

– If others can do it, so can I.

– I have been able to make changes in life even under the most difficult circumstances.

– I don’t want to retire visiting hospitals as my retirement job.

– I don’t like the way hospitals treat patients and “health” in general.

– Challenging myself is the single most important approach to growth.

– I have unlimited growth potential.

So, you may not believe what I believe, but that’s fine: you can build your own belief list. When you read these beliefs, they ought to evoke a sense of certainty and… “resolve”.

4. What do I do as a result of this series of beliefs?

This is easy to do, if you know what to track. 

– I build an exercise plan. (first day)

– I stick to my exercise plan. (first week)

– I change my lifestyle to accommodate my exercise plan. (first month)

– I create a nutritional plan to suit my new lifestyle. (first weeks)

– I record and notice my body adjusting from a 22.5% body fat to 16% (months)

5. Does this result help me in my journey toward the “what”?

This part is important because it tells you the “so what”. Just doing and not tracking results is like driving blindfolded. So you have to create your own evaluation dashboard to clarify this. I can tell you that the first 4 weeks was like you trying to plant a seed, watering it and seeing nothing happening for 4 weeks. I could have given up if not for my clarified beliefs. I had to educate myself to know that ketosis takes a few weeks if not a few months for the average person to get into. I adjusted and after 14 weeks, I had arrived at a body weight of 68.5kg. This simply now becomes self-reinforcing. It creates a new identity – “I am a person who knows how to stay fit and healthy, look good and lose weight on demand.” Today I’m happy to hover around 71kg, and at 48 years of age, able to do 50 chin ups in about 10 minutes, where I used to struggle with 3.

Now, I can give examples of plenty of other areas, but this is typically as long as a person would read an email or article. There will be opportunities to get solid clarity on one’s goals and dreams, so I would suggest that you go from here and try it on your own for areas that are less complex so you build confidence in your own capabilities.

I hope this serves you in the year, so that you are resolved to be resolute toward your resolutions with clear resolution. 😉

For areas where you want to save time and get clarity quickly, I would invite you to join me in my Apex Coaching program (for Mindset/Life Growth, Business Management, Speaking/Coaching/Consulting)  where you can hop on a discovery call with me to define the parameters of your coaching. I’m not a person with a rigid coaching program structure. Just like the Fortune 500 companies, government statutory boards and Ministries I trained, I develop a personalized/bespoke program for what you need within the parameters of your domain of need.

To look at what others have said about my capabilities, amongst the 500,000+ people I have trained from all over the world ranging from executive leaders to startup founders, just head to StuartTan.com!