Each year this time around as the new year begins to take shape people—especially my clients—ask me what resolution they should make to improve their life, get a better job, make more money, have more work-life harmony, and be happy. Until recently, I’d respond to them by asking them the details of their priorities, what they struggle with, what is important to them, and on and on. Then I’d help them formulate their New Year’s resolution and ask them to write it down.

However, when I re-visited their resolution in a session a year after making it nothing had changed for most of them. Granted most of them were able to make some incremental and transactional changes to their lives, but nothing fundamentally changed, continuing their status quo. This is because nearly 90% of the New Year’s Resolutions end up in trash heap, barely a month after they are put in action; oftentimes, a lot sooner than that. For each infraction there is a compelling excuse: Oh!, it was my son’s birthday party, so I had to have that piece of cake; It was raining and the gym was too far to go in that heavy rain; I did not have the courage to say that I made a mistake and own it to get me back in the  good stead with my boss; and on and on!

So, this year I am going to ask you to make a different resolution that requires NO physical burden on your part: no going to the gym; no diet restrictions; no changing how you behave with those around you; no staying up late or getting up early; or any of that which requires you to invent new excuses to rationalize why you could not keep your Resolution. Would you like that?  

This Resolution involves learning your own story and knowing how to tell it to yourself time and again until you become that story.

Let me explain: We are very good at telling our story to others, even when we ourselves do not fully believe in that story. Just look at any Elevator Pitch and ask someone delivering it if they truly believe that to be true for them.

Why?

It is because we are rehearsing that Elevator Pitch to inveigle someone to buy into our act and for us to get what we think we want: a job, a promotion, more money, someone’s love, among other things. Oftentimes, this Elevator Pitch is an ersatz story we convince ourselves that it is ours and that it should serve is to get what we want in that transaction.

I’d like to propose a different approach. First, find out what your own story is that rings true for yourself. Try telling that story to yourself and see if you yourself buy into that story and keep shaping it until you are convinced that it IS your story and you must own it. Once you get to this point keep telling that story to yourself time and again until you become that story. Once you get to this stage, I guarantee you that this will transform your life and your own very being.

 Let me now tell you how this approach worked for me: I started my career coaching business 18 years back because it seemed the right thing to do then. I had already changed four careers prior to that, and it was 2001. Everything in the Silicon Valley was imploding: companies, especially start-ups were going bust; major, iconic corporations were laying-off large numbers of employees—by the thousands—with no end in sight. This provided me an opportunity to pursue career coaching as a possible new avenue for me after my own lay-off to leverage my previous re-inventions to show others how to re-invent themselves.

So, when I started my coaching career, I’d introduce myself as, Hi, I am Dilip Saraf and I do career coaching. It took me a few more years of doing coaching work with hundreds of clients and seeing some success, to change that introduction to, Hi, I am Dilip Saraf and I am a career coach. This subtle shift from “doing” to “being” changed the way I practiced my craft. It took me a few more years and a few thousand more client successes for me to change that narrative yet again to: “Hi, I am Dilip Saraf and I am the best career coach that you will find. If you find yourself a better coach, let me know.” To me it did not matter if there were coaches better than I was, but what mattered to me was that I was the best coach as I saw it.

This simple shift in how I told myself my own story changed how I viewed myself and how it changed my coaching practice. Although it seems an easy thing to do by changing a few words, it is one of the hardest things that we struggle with all our lives.

So, here is my tip for your New Year’s resolution: Dig deep, find your own story, tell it to yourself over and over and become that story. The beauty of this Resolutions is twofold: it takes very little, excuse-free effort to implement it, once you know your own story; second, it will transform your life forever!

Good luck!