Five Must-Answer Questions to Get Over the Crucial ‘Hump-Time’ of the New Year

You’ve started a new year – or a new chapter in your life that feels like a new year – and two or three weeks have passed. How are you doing with your intentions for your new beginning? Have you reached what I call your “hump time” yet…that time when you’re a little stalled and feeling like you’re trying to get over that road bump that’s slowing your progress down already? You might be thinking to yourself, “I just started this new beginning with the best of intentions and great enthusiasm, and now I’m feeling like I’ve slowed down when I should still be in accelerated action”.

Well guess what? You’re not alone at this hump-time of a new beginning. I researched when is the typical time when people slow down after their new-beginning declarations and intentions. I discovered there are two crucial times where we slow down and those (dare I call them) resolutions start to fade: (1) within two weeks of a new year (or new beginning), and (2) within two months of the new start.

When I’m honest with myself I realize that I, too, hit these hump-times and have to follow my own advice to my clients, myself. I have to practice what I preach and do for myself what I’m sharing with you here. And I can verify that this works because I’m back in action with renewed focus after my own hump-time.

 Getting past your hump-time requires responding honestly to yourself to five crucial questions. I share these five crucial questions here with you, and give you a brief explanation to each of them. Answer these five questions during your own hump-times to get back in action before your new beginnings get stalled for good.

First – why is your idea (or goal, dream, intention, or plan) important to you? Yes, sure…your first answer is your public answer, the answer you give me or anyone else who asks you why it’s important to you. But then look inside yourself and find your private answer – that answer that hits your heart and makes you tingle or cry (or both). This is the answer that sustains you through the roadblocks and barriers you face to keeping your ideas in action and bringing them to completion.

Second – what’s stopping you right now? Every hump-time has a cause whose effect is to stop your forwards momentum. Identify what that cause truly is, even if it’s yourself getting in your own way. Then determine what or whom you need to help you get out of “stuck” and back into action.

Third – and this is a different answer from the last one because it plays off of your last answer. What’s keeping you from getting what or whom you need to help you get out of “stuck” at this moment, and are you going to let what’s keeping you keep you in inaction? You’ll have to read this a couple of times to get it.  Basically the question is, once you’ve identified what or whom you need to help you get unstuck, and you still haven’t acted on getting these resources, why not? What’s the deeper thing that’s keeping you from acting on what you know darned well you need to be in action? Then the real deal is, will you keep letting yourself stay in inaction?

Next – how serious are you about moving forward? Are you willing – and ready – to put your stake in the ground and declare what you will do to move forward with your ideas? Are you willing to make your declaration public, to other people, so that you’ve put it out there into the universe? Once you do this – put your declaration out there – you tend to feel that extra obligation to the universe to be and stay in action.

 

And last – what supports will you put in place to stay in action? No one succeeds alone. Yet there are people whom you reach out to who will slow you down or stop you. Create your support system that will hold you up and be your pillars to implementation. Get the resources you need – people and systems, tools, and infrastructure – to support you in your success.

 

I suggest that you cut out the above cue-card and keep it with you, or post it where your plans for the year are posted. You can answer these five questions over and over again during your own hump-times so that you stay in action on your goals and intentions and so that next year, at this time, you are where you wanted, intended, and needed to be.

BONUS: Watch the recording of my program “Idea Lab: Make-or-Break Actions for Entire Year” for a full 60-minute lesson on these five must-answer questions…and more!