Most of us would rather wrestle a gator than sit down and set goals for ourselves. You have to wonder why this is.

In my seminars on goal setting, which is tantamount to setting your New Year's resolutions, I have found that there are four simple reasons why people don't set goals for themselves.

Reason number one: They aren't sold on setting goals. As the old saying goes, they don't know what they don't know. We're afraid of the unknown so we figure, why bother?

Reason number two: They don't know how to set a goal. If you will simply answer the following questions, you are on you are half way through the process: who, what, when, where, why, how? Who do I need to consult to help me with my goal? What do I specifically want to accomplish? When do I want to have this accomplished? Where do I turn for these resources? Why do I want to change or add this new behavior? How do I plan to accomplish this? Is the goal reasonable? Is the goal a challenge? Am I reaching out to improve? Does the goal have a legitimate and sensible time frame in which it can be accomplished?

Reason number three: We're afraid we're going to fail? No one wants to fail at anything. Management guru Tom Peters, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame and I did a number of presentations over the years to the greatest company on the planet, Milliken & Company based in Spartanburg, SC. Milliken required 40 hours of continuing education out of all its employees each year in order just to keep your job. Peters made this observation: "If failing is the process by which we succeed, then it should follow that in order to have more success, we therefore need more failure. We've got to teach people to fail faster!" His thought was simple: "Ready, fire, aim!"

Reason number four: We're afraid we'll succeed! If you did a poll and put number one, two and three in one stack, reason number four would outweigh the rest combined! People are more afraid of success than they are failure. They don't think they deserve to be successful. That Wendy's Hamburger ad on TV years ago summed it up. The announcer said "Which would you rather have this big, juicy Wendy's Hamburger or this frozen piece of beef?" The respondent said "I'll take the frozen beef because I don't deserve the big, juicy Wendy's hamburger." That's truly how it is in life. Many of us don't think we deserve to have the best.

I recall fondly an interview that the late John Kennedy did in 1959 when he was a Senator running for President. The interviewer posed this question: "Senator Kennedy, would you accept the Vice Presidency today if you could be guaranteed that you could not lose as opposed to running for President and possibly losing?" I never forgot Kennedy's response: "Why should I accept number two when number one is available?"

In life, many of us accept number two when something better is available. That's why goals and New Year's resolutions become important. New Year's Day is everyone's birthday. The old is out and the new is in. We all start with a clean slate. As Oprah Winfrey once said, "It gives us another chance to get it right!"

Some rules for setting your resolutions to get them right:

Number one: Write it down. Unwritten goals are little more than a dream.

Number two: Share it with a mentor. When you share your goal, you share your dreams and vision. A great mentor will tell you two things: what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong.

Number three: Check up on your goals often. Winners keep score. A batter knows within a thousandth of a point what his average is. A good salesman knows exactly how many people he needs to see to make a sale and knows what every call is worth to the penny, whether he makes a sale or not. They keep score.

Number four: Review and revise as necessary. It's critical to visit and revisit your objectives, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually. Otherwise it's so very easy to give up on them if you're behind or start coasting if you're ahead.

Let's face it, when you're coasting, you are heading down hill. The new year shouldn't be viewed as a time for us to start over on old bad habits. The only way you can change results is to change your behavior.

As the old bumper sticker points out: "IF YOU KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING, YOU KEEP GETTING THE SAME RESULTS." What's that old definition of insanity? DOING THE SAME OLD THINGS AND EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT. It ain't going to happen!