Timeless Advice on Keeping New Year's Resolutions by Anthony "Tony" Robbins

I came across this video from Anthony Robbins that deals with New Year's resolutions. The video was uploaded in 2010 but the contents are still as relevant as ever.

The video is called "New Year, New Life" and deals with why people fail to keep their New Year's resolutions. More importantly, it focuses on how to do better. I definitely recommend people with resolutions for this year to watch the video in its entirety.

The text below is but my humble summary of the video in which I tell you the some of the points that Anthony Robbins makes. I have added a few citations of my own and references to books that I've read as I feel they relate to what Anthony says.

An important lesson is that success is an ongoing journey by doing things right or wrong every day. Even when you set a goal and you achieve it, it will only be a stepping stone for your future goals. It is very important to focus daily on what your goals are and how you're going to achieve them. You can do this by creating daily or weekly routines that further your progress towards your goals.

We humans are really striving for progress to feel alive and that's what Anthony notes in his video. Every year the calendar suggests that you can make a fresh start and do things better in the new year. But you can start every day by making improvements! Every time you do something or neglect to do something, you are working towards certain results. Whether you like those results or not, you will get some form of result after doing (or not doing) something.

It is up to you to change your actions if you want different results. It is like Albert Einstein said: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". Anthony Robbins relates to this by saying: "Stay committed to your decisions but stay flexible in your approach". That is very true. You must know what you want but you must also know when your current approach isn't going to work. You must learn the difference between an approach that doesn't work right now and approaches that will never work because they are fundamentally flawed.

The key to setting goals for yourself is to be specific in what you must have. As Anthony says, it is not about what you want to have because then you are merely composing a wishlist. If you raise your standards in life and you make it clear to yourself what you must have, you will find a way to make it happen.

If you must have more money to feed your family and to pay your bills then you will come up with a way to get the money. If you are content with paying your bills "most of the time" then you will end up doing just that.

The last paragraph is a good example of what raising your standards can do. If you raise your standards to paying your bills and feeding your family then that will be your new standard of living. You will come up with a creative way to make this happen. If you raise your standards even further by demanding that you also have enough money for fun or for your savings account then you'll work harder to get that as well.

And why stop there? As Donald Trump and Bill Zanker discuss in their book "Think Big", you have every reason to start thinking even bigger. Why should you be content with $5000 when you easily could have had $50,000? Striving to earn a million dollar is actually a greater motivator to kick you into action than just striving to have enough money to pay your bills. The latter isn't going to excite you very much when you get up in the morning. But if you have a worthy goal that excites you (usually not the monetary gain), you can earn a lot of money along the way.

Life is not all about the money however. But raising your standards is always a good thing. There are many areas in life where you can raise your standards, such as your health (diet and excercise), personal finance (savings and spendings) and relationships (the people you spend most of your time with).

If you want to know more about what I've written above, you should watch the following video! The video consists of four parts and I'm putting the first part here below. You can find the other four parts by clicking on the small video icons at the bottom when you're done with viewing this part. Alternatively, you can go to the YouTube website and look for videos with the same title but with different numbers at the end.

This article was written by Simeon Visser. I am earning money online by writing here at HubPages.com. Would you like to earn money online as well? Read the success stories and sign up today to get started!