I’d like to begin by wishing all my loyal readers a Happy New Year. Much health, happiness and, of course, success! It’s that time of the year again; the time when it seems everyone is trying to keep their New Year’s resolutions.

Some people want to join a gym and lose 20 pounds; others will try to quit smoking yet again. Some will promise to eat less chocolate or read more books. Whatever one’s resolution, it is not likely to be kept unless we work at it every single day.

step by step

For those of you that have more meaty resolutions: getting a promotion to divisional manager, increasing your company’s sales by 100% this year, putting your competitor out of business, increasing your market share, finding the woman of your dreams, etc., you will need to devise a plan if you want to get things done.

The point is that whatever you set your mind to, it won’t happen on its own and it will definitely not happen overnight, unless of course your resolution was to sleep all night! If you want to make your New Year’s resolutions come true, you will have to give them some serious thought and effort every day of the year.

The bigger the project, the less likely it is that you will be able to do everything at once. Let’s suppose your goal for the New Year is to earn more money — at least 10% more. You can’t just walk into the office and get that 10%; you’ll have to take steps to earn it.

persistence and consistency

Let’s suppose you work in sales, and you’re therefore paid on commission. One of the basic principles of selling is that the more doors you knock on, the more potential sales you will make.

If you are currently able to make 6 successful sales calls a day, or 30 sales calls a week, you would have to increase the number of calls by at least 10% to have a shot at increasing your revenue proportionally. Thus if you need to make 60 calls to get 6 successful ones, then you would have to make an extra 30 calls a week to meet your goal. That is, you’d make an average of about 5 additional calls per day to attain your 10% increase.

Why am I going into such detail, you ask? To illustrate the point that you will have to make an effort to reach your goals. Furthermore, you won’t be able to just make an extra 30 calls on Monday then forget about them for the rest of the week. You will have to give a consistent additional effort every single day to make it big.

What’s the best way to attain everything you want?

day by day

The best way to achieve anything big in life, perhaps the only way, is to take things step by step. Going back to our example above, you won’t just start calling more people every day. Before doing so, you will have to find the sales leads, study your prospects, come up with a tailored sales pitch, introduce yourself, get to know them and their needs, and only then can you pitch them your products (or services or ideas for that matter).

Thus, there is a lot of preparation and legwork that is involved and the best way to handle the workload is to work at it a little bit every day so as to not be overwhelmed. At first, you may only be able to make an additional 2 sales per day as you build and adjust to your new workload. As you get better, you’ll become more efficient and will be able to make the extra calls every day. Eventually, you will achieve your goal.

don’t get discouraged

Nothing that is worth achieving in this world will come easy. Get ready to put your nose to the grindstone and sweat it out because the road ahead is always roughest for the trailblazers.

You have to learn to build on every little victory because each win acts like fuel to your confidence and ability to achieve bigger and better things. If you start off slow and can’t convert that many sales calls to actual sales, don’t get down on yourself. Instead, figure out why things aren’t going as well as you’d like and come up with a modified plan.

Use the new plan and attack with full force. Keep doing this until you hit the nail on the head. It may take days, weeks, months, or even years before you get it right, but eventually you will get it right if you keep trying. Remember, Edison failed to create the light bulb thousands of times before getting it right!

recipe for success

Taking things step by step applies to any resolutions you’ve made. Suppose you were a little on the skinny side and wanted to gain 20 lbs of solid muscle. You wouldn’t be able to do it in one week. You would have to come up with a training routine, eating regimen and sleep schedule to get you started. You would have to decide how much you could gain each week and then devote each day to achieving part of your goal.

As you workout 4-5 times per week you will start noticing small changes in your body. After 2 months the changes will be very visible; after 6 months of steady training the results will be dramatic. The trick is to train your body a little at a time. You can’t just walk into a gym and bench press 300 lbs. You have to start at 150 lbs and work your way up. This same rule applies to any endeavor you choose to begin.

Remember, take it step by step, build on your small victories and never quit. Good luck & Happy New Year!