Welcome back to a new year and a clean slate.  We all know that the new year brings a slew of resolutions and promises to change your bad habits and become the perfect you.

Whooooooooaaaa!! Slow down. First, let’s get honest about this resolution business.

I have nothing against resolutions, pledges for a better you, and the decision to change bad habits.  What I have a problem with is the harsh nature of some of these resolutions which only lead to short-lived results and ultimately failure to live up to this new perfect you.  If you have resolutions, let’s start with getting honest about what is and is not realistic.

Before you look forward to the perfect 2020 you must first look at the lessons you learned from 2019.  Let’s begin with some very important questions that will make it very easy for you to see what you need to do to have a better year moving forward. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What wasted more of my precious time in 2019 than any other activity?
2. What did I want to do more of in 2019 but was unable to do?
3. What prevented me from doing more of that activity?
4. What do I wish I did less of in 2019?
5. What was my most successful lead generation effort of 2019?
6. What was my least effective lead generation effort of 2019?
7. What mistakes did I make with clients that I never want to repeat? What did I learn from those mistakes?
8. If I could name one thing that brought me the greatest joy in my business, what was it?
9. If I could name one thing that brought me the greatest frustration in my business, what was it?
10. If there was one thing in my business that I would never want to do again, what would that be and could I pay someone else to do it?

These questions are a good start to examining what really went on in 2019 and they will give you much needed insight into why you didn’t reach the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of last year. You can’t just look forward with a well-intended resolution without analyzing your past behavior. It is your behaviors that prevent success or propel you forward.

When you answer the questions above you will see obvious patterns of behavior.  Most of the answers you will give will fall into one of three categories.

1. Lack of time – If you find yourself never being able to complete the things you pledged to complete it is probably because you are too busy and not making time for it. That means something with less priority must go or must done after you have completed the important task. I often find myself chuckling when I ask a client to tell me exactly what they did in the past 48 hours and we identify numerous things that could have been put on the back burner in order to complete a high priority money making task.
     
2. Lack of talent– If you find yourself struggling with a task that is hard for you to do perhaps you just don’t have the required talent to do it. If you are not good with bookkeeping but you know you must track your spending but you find that at the end of the year your books are a disaster then you need to hire someone to do it for you. Stop beating yourself up for not being good at that task. So what? Who cares? No big deal!  Just address it, fix it, hire someone to do it for you and stop trying to be perfect at everything.  Focus your talent on your highest money earning activities and you will earn more than enough money to pay someone to do that task for you.
3. Lack of desire – If you find things not getting done then perhaps you have no desire to do them. A great example of this is the agent that doesn’t like doing open houses but spends every weekend away from their family being miserable. They dread doing open houses because they just don’t like them or they don’t want to be away from their family on the weekend which explains their lack of desire to do open houses. Okay, no problem. Admit it, move on, and choose another way to bring new leads into your business.  There are so many great ways to generate leads; you don’t have to be stuck doing something that you don’t like doing.  You will only fight harder and come up with more creative excuses to not do them anyway so surrender and move on to something you do want to do!

2020 is your opportunity to change the behaviors that haven’t been serving you well and to learn from your previous actions.  No judgement, no getting down on yourself – it is time to examine why you do the things you do and create a path to move forward in a way that will lead to results…not further frustration.

Here’s to a fabulous 2020!
 

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