Your Most Important New Year’s Resolution

Resolutions…love/hate, right?  You know you should create some…maybe you already do.  You need to be healthier, you want to finally run that marathon, you need to be more organized, you need to save more money, you need to stop looking at Facebook so much…

But which one matters the most?  If you set only one goal for the new year, what should it be?

This is an article that makes it very simple.  In it I share with you the most important New Year’s resolution that you can set. This is a universal resolution that EVERYONE should make. It doesn’t matter of who you are or what you are trying to achieve.

The most important New Year’s resolution you can set is…

Resistance is The Great Deceiver

When it comes to fear, Resistance can play you like a fiddle. If you let it, Resistance will convince you that the screaming voice of fear in your head is really just your “better judgment.” You can easily be convinced that the time when you avoided fear were the times that you were making “shrewd decisions.”

But that is a lie.

“Fear dressed up as wisdom provides poor council.”

– Chip Gaines

The truth is, you fear whatever it is, because that’s where the failure (or the success, or the embarrassment, or the spotlight, or…) may lie. Resistance is keeping you at bay with that fear because it knows that your ego wants desperately to avoid failure.  Your ego loves to be comfortable and makes up soothing stories to tell yourself about why you should never step outside of your box.

But don’t let it…Here are some tips on not letting fear win, inspired from a book I’m currently reading.

3 Tips on How to Fight The Fear – from Chip Gaines

I’m currently reading Chip Gaines’s book, “Capital Gaines”.  Chip and his wife Joanna run the very successful Magnolia brand.  This book is full of some outstanding thoughts, rousing experiences, and practical tips on this very topic.  Chip is a guy who semi-humbly professes that he hasn’t had much struggle with fear, and I think its because of his outlook.

Here are 3 great takeaways for not letting fear win inspired by Chip’s musings on the subject.

1. Use Fear As Your Guide

What? Yup…I’ve talked about this before. One way to get over fear (or at least not let it win) is to aim directly for it. The very things that cause you the most anxiety may just be the things that will help you grow, make your decisions easier, and help you reach that best version of yourself.

Look it directly in the eye, acknowledge its scary as hell, and go take that sucker down!

2. Leap Before You Look (Sometimes)

Or put another way: Take action! Take the opportunities that come your way.

Nothing ever changes if you don’t take action. Overthinking and overanalyzing will almost ALWAYS allow Resistance to convince you that “better judgement” says no.

From Chip:

“…we don’t always know whether the decisions we make are going to be life altering or not…But if we spend our time on what might go wrong or how we could fail, then we’re likely to talk ourselves out of doing anything, altogether — without even stopping to consider what the cost of saying no might be.  Swaddling ourselves up in our security blankets completely restricts our ability to take courageously bold steps.”

You may not even be able to see the real opportunity because sometimes, its not the opportunity in front of you that changes your life directly, its the opportunity that results from that original opportunity. Many, many entrepreneurs stories have this type of story line:

“Well, I started down a path with the initial idea, but then that led to such-and-such, which led to such-and-such, and so-on…and here I am!  I would have never made it here if it wasn’t for that initial opportunity.”

3. Do the Hard Things

There aren’t many stories worth telling (and hearing) that are summed up by, “Yup, that was easy!”

Most, if not all, of the important things you do in your life will be difficult at best, but more than likely will have some grueling parts. Some of these parts will be so hard that you’ll think about quitting, and sometimes you will.  But when you quit doing the hard things, you’ve lost the battle. Your story most likely ends with “I’m so glad I kept going”.

From Chip:

“I vote instead of fretting about the problems in this world, we all become part of the solutions. This happens through our willingness to make small, brave decision.  No one is born a hero.  It takes a lifetime of courageous choices to get there. So quit dodging the hard things.  When you make the choice to duck left to avoid something scary, you could miss a beautiful opportunity on the right.”

The Most Important New Year’s Resolution

Don’t Let Fear Win!

That’s your resolution, and mantra for the year. It is the most important New Year’s resolution any of us can set. If every day this year, you look fear in the eye, and do it anyway, I guarantee you that you will look back and you will not be the same person.  You will have grown immeasurably…you will have moved forward…and its likely that your business and your life will be miles ahead of where you are right now.

I’ll leave you with this, from the famous philosopher Walter White.