17th February 2014

Aegon: We can all learn from General Grant

So, did you set a New Year’s resolution?

Were you one of the millions of people across the globe that sit down at the start of every New Year and make a conscious effort to improve their lives or how they run their business?

Psychologists are fascinated by the drivers behind this resolution season. They’ve looked at the reasons people want to make these resolutions. Recovering from the season of excess, is a major reason as 30% of us want to cut down on alcohol, while a quarter plan to stop smoking.

We all start with great intentions as two thirds of those who made resolutions did so with a concrete goal in mind, including reaching a certain weight, clearing debt and saving for a holiday.

The problem is that usually by the second week in January our good intentions have failed!

Six out of 10 admitted to making the same promise last year. On average, we'll have failed in sticking to the same resolution a disappointing four times.

I’m not a fan of resolutions, but I am a passionate believer in the power of goals - and these should, and can, be set at any time.

For those of you struggling to set, or even meet, your goals I’d like to share this story about the American president and famous Civil War General Ulysses S Grant. 

After leaving the presidency, Grant made some very bad investment choices and, in 1884 ended up completely financially destitute. With a family to support he was even reduced to selling his Civil War mementos. This wasn’t his only problem. He also found out that his years of famous cigar smoking had given him throat cancer, which was terminal.

His one goal was to restore his family fortune and personal honour, and he decided to use the time he had available to achieve this. He sat on his family porch every day for a year and wrote his book, the personal memoirs of Ulysses S Grant. He died a few days after it was published.

This proved to be a massive success, securing the largest advance for an author at the time, and restored his family finances. He also received critical acclaim from leading military historians and a certain fellow writer, by the name of Mark Twain, calling it a literary master piece! No faint praise.

Grant took his situation and decided on what he had to achieve. He didn’t wait for January, he didn’t set a resolution that he knew he would break, he set a clear goal.

Goals should be driven by your desire to improve, succeed and change. We can all learn from the courage and determination of General Grant, and I guess the biggest lesson is necessity is the mother of all invention.

So ask yourself what's really necessary in your life and set goals to achieve it.

John Joe McGinley
Head of Business Brain, Aegon 
January 2014

Business Development