Stop thinking, just do.

It’s January.

“New year, new me.”

You’ve probably heard it or something similar a million times already this year. And whilst it might be a little annoying, you can’t deny that you’ve done it. I’ll happily admit that I’ve done it.

Research shows that 1 in 4 won’t have made it past week one before failing their resolution and less than 1 in 10 will make it to the end of the year. Which I guess is what annoys me about people setting resolutions because I know that most people won’t see it through. It’s annoying and also a little sad.

I see a lot of people talking about all the changes they’re going to make, but you can tell that they’re overthinking it, they get overwhelmed by it and end up not doing anything because they’ve made it too difficult in their own head. If it’s a big goal, they’ll only think about the size of the goal and it’s so big it scares them so they end up doing nothing.

Which is why I’m a big fan of two words. Just do.

Don’t say you’re going to be better with money. Be better with money.

Don’t say you’re going to go to the gym and lose weight. Go to the gym.

Don’t say you’re going to be a better person. Be a better person.

It’s talk the talk vs walk the walk. And most people just talk the talk.

I’ll give you an example of how I’ve used this in my own life. I was a talk the talk kinda guy for the longest time. At the start of the year I would say “This is the year I make a change. This is the year, I do something with my life.” But it never happened. The idea of it was nice but I was never serious enough.

Which is partly where this account on Medium has come from. 2020 is the year that I’m committing to following through on what I say. I can’t sit here and tell people that you should just do it, when I’m not doing the same myself, so here I am.

A lot of people set a goal that seems too big, it scares them and then stop chasing it. So break it down. If I asked you to build me a house, you wouldn’t try and build the whole house in one go, it’d be overwhelming and impossible. You would start with a single brick. You would place one brick, and then another, and then another. Eventually you’d have a wall. And then a short while later you’d have a complete house. Job complete.

The same goes for any goal you have in life. Break it down into smaller, more achievable steps.

Let’s use the gym as an example.

Let’s say you want to get fitter, that might be losing weight or something like that. The goal of losing 3 stone might seem unachievable so break it down. Break it down into smaller, daily goals. So set the goal of going to the gym tomorrow. That’s definitely a more achievable goal than trying to lose 3 stone. Then the day after do the same and before you know it, you’re losing weight and that 3 stone goal comes into sight.

As the famous saying goes…

“The journey of a thousand miles, starts with a single step.”

You could even take inspiration from Nike and use their slogan whenever you need a boost.

‘Just do it.”

I’ve been following that now for the last couple of months and I’ve achieved more and got more done in the last few months than the whole year previous.

Whatever the goal is, stop talking, break it down and get after it.

Life’s a finite thing. It’s short, and it goes by in the blink of an eye. You get out of it what you put in. I’ve waffled on for a while now so I’ll leave you with just one thing…

Just do.

See you next week.