How to make resolutions you can keep
Tired of feeling like a failure every time you set (and break) your New Year’s resolution? Statistics tell us that most of people give up on their resolutions within a couple of months.
But, you can stop ripping yourself over failed resolutions, and make positive lasting changes in 2013 by thinking of your resolutions a bit differently.
Start by shifting your focus to what is already working in your life. When you stop worrying about past failures, or ruminating on your flaws and all that you have to fix, you’ll have more energy and motivation to put into your passions, skills and talents – the things that will help you create the positive changes in your life. So, take a minute to notice what you have already achieved and the good things you’ve got going on, then check out what’s motivating you to make more changes.
Are there things you want to learn or change or improve for you or are you feeling pressured by someone else to make a shift? If you want to lose weight to impress your partner that is a harder to goal to sustain than one that is motivated by your own inner desire to be healthier or feel better.
Don’t do it for someone else, find something that’s important to you personally, and go for it.
When you are clear about your focus and motivation, then you can pick a broader theme to guide your life in 2013, rather than a single objective.
So many of our resolutions focus on a specific achievement – to stop smoking, or lose weight – when what we really want is the feeling that accomplishing those goals will provide.
When you find ways to experience those positive emotions NOW, you’re more likely to create positive changes that will sustain them all year round.
Think about it this way: Instead of picking a goal to make $100,000 in 2013, go with a broader theme to create greater wealth or abundance in your life, and begin brainstorming all the ways you can do that.
If you want to lose weight, then, put your focus on all the things you can do to nourish and strengthen your body – rather than how many pounds you need to lose. Then do things – big or small – every day that nourish your body.
Celebrate the healthy steps you take, each day. Feel the good feelings that come when you know you are taking care of your body. This way you create beliefs that lead to healthy habits and the weight is likely to come off too. Plus, you’ll feel better in the process.
Here are other tips for making lasting improvements in the year ahead:
1. Be persistent – do something to create the feeling of success around your goal every day. This is about creating a lifestyle, a process to help you make the change you desire, so each day, do something with that in mind. Then, when you do make the money, or lose the weight you are more apt to keep the weight off and hold onto your income because you’ve established a sustainable practice rather than simply focused on a single outcome.
2. Be creative and have fun. There are lots of ways to create a healthy body, or more money, or a happier life. Get creative, be open to new ideas and approaches for whatever it is you want to create and the process will be filled with possibility rather than problems.
3. Be imperfect. There will be moments, when you screw it up completely. When you revert to your old ways, to your bad habits. Pay attention to those moments, they provide important information that can ultimately help us succeed. For example, if you choose the cake rather than the carrot sticks, notice why. Perhaps, you are celebrating a birthday and the cake was a conscious choice. Or maybe you wolfed down a piece without hardly tasting it and you realize it was an emotional response to a bad day at the office. Those things can be revealing. The emotional eating provides information that can inspire you to deal with the source of the struggle, instead of continuing down the path of stress and bad eating. Whatever shows up is here to serve you.
This, more benevolent approach to resolutions, is about creating a lifestyle that you desire rather than achieving a single goal. Though you will achieve many goals in the process, you will also build daily routines that you can keep up and a life that you want to live.
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