New Year's resolutions – scrap ‘em!
Any of these New Year’s ressies
sound familiar?
1. Lose 5/10/25 pounds
2. Drink more water
3. Exercise
30 minutes a day
4. Stop eating after 6 p.m.
5. Cut out sugar
6. Stop
drinking during the week
7. Join a gym
8. Go to the gym
9. Stop
smoking
10. Lose weight
11. Find a new job
12. Find
more time for myself
13. Meditate
14. Run a 10k, do a
triathlon, run a marathon
One or more of the above ring a bell? Are you
wondering why none of your resolutions, whether simple or seemingly outrageous,
have materialized as successes?
Well maybe, after years and years of making resolutions, starting over on
Monday, committing to yourself “absolutely” and then never following through -
we have all simply conditioned ourselves to fail. So really anything at this
point is an unrealistic expectation - we already know we’re not going to do
it.
What I recommend, rather than reinforcing this old system of perpetual
failure, is to forget the past, and try something totally new!
The focus
for this New Year is faith (and a plan, but I’ll get to that later). You are
going to have to muster the belief (even if everything in your past suggests
differently) that you actually are capable of making a change. You’ll have to
trash your old ideas, all of them, and start from scratch.
Here’s what
you’ll need to do:
1. Get yourself a new and improved positive attitude
for Christmas, and imagine, fantasize, even pretend, that you can do it!
My guess is that disappointment has dismembered your faith, and I can
certainly relate to that. But things can be different, it happens all the time,
things go along the same old way for years and years and then something shifts –
this shift is often due to a scare (your doctor tells you that if you don’t stop
this, or start that, you’re headed for serious trouble) or an immediate and
overwhelming desire (you want to look good for a wedding or reunion) or, believe
it or not, it can happen because you decide (from a place deep down inside) that
you can do it.
No drama, no promises, no fearful consequences if you don’t. The realization
that you look, feel, or are living your life in a way that feels sub-par,
unacceptable, or not at all what you want, has finally hit you like a ton of
bricks and you very quietly decide that enough is enough.
2. Don’t wait for insurance, or some sign from above that you “truly
believe;” start now, and if you’re not convinced that any major shift has
occurred, pretend, plain and simple, fake it, until you own the secure belief
that you are capable, and able to stick with it and do whatever it is you set
out to do.
You may even go as far (and this would be great) as taking on a
childlike wonder in knowing that anything is possible!
3. Stop trying to
mentally muscle this thing, and stop trying to figure it out, that’s what you
have been doing all these years. First you work it out, then you put
restrictions and threats in place, then you try the reward system - but alas –
our minds actually, I believe, are responsible for the sabotage, and it’s
happening at a level (unconscious) that most of us have little or no
understanding of, or access to – until now.
Belief, faith, and trust come from some special, unidentifiable and powerful
place inside you – it’s there - it just is. You can’t figure it out, so you
can’t screw it up either - that’s the beauty. Even better, it’s free. So you
really have nothing to lose - just try on some faith for good measure, for
whatever, to humor me. Even the inference of faith is helpful. And, if you must,
go ahead and give it a trial period, like 30 days, and if you don’t feel better,
you can forget the whole thing.
4. Have a ceremony, write down every
reason you think you’ll fail and then burn it! I am not kidding you – this
ritualistic act of relinquishing forever your thoughts and ways of old creates a
giant opening for the new. Somehow, we (as individuals and a society) have come
to a place in our lives where we no longer subscribe to, utilize, believe in, or
have time for, ceremony, but this leaves us to live life from a purely mental,
and physical place – void of belief in anything more than what we can see and
feel.
If you think this little act of ritual is ‘out of character’ for you – do it
for sure! The fact is, what you are about to do, and to transform into, is out
of character for you, so get into the new you, do something that you wouldn’t
normally do – something that shows you are letting go of the old, and allowing
for the new, on every level.
5. Repeat something positive to yourself
over and over – like a mantra - one that reinforces your willingness, like:
a. I am ready to change my mind and my behavior.
b. I can do this, and I
know it – don’t know how, I just do.
c. My desire to change is enforced by
my new actions.
d. Even a little means a lot.
This too is exercise.
Mental exercises change your mind the way physical exercises change your body.
But here we run into the dilemma of: if I haven’t been able to commit to
exercising regularly enough to lose 10 lbs., how can I expect that I will do my
mental exercises and change my mind?
The answer is – you act as if you believe. Do it anyway, go forward and trust
that with this new attitude, these exercises, and your inner decision to change,
everything will be fine.
In the beginning, you don’t really have to believe that this will work – you
just have to do the work (mental and physical) and soon your efforts will foster
a new level of trust and you will start to believe that you can do it. After
that, you have the magic of being able to apply this new trust in yourself to
anything.
At a very low point in my life (I was really down, financially,
emotionally, and physically) I took a course that required me to repeat certain
sentences, new concepts actually, over and over throughout the day.
I guess all I had was the tiniest hope that change was possible, or I
wouldn’t have taken the course. But I am living proof (that is why I confidently
recommend this) that even a microscopic amount of willingness is enough to turn
things around. In fact everything in me did change from doing (what I thought at
the time to be ridiculous) mental exercises. Listen, you already know that
another New Year’s resolutions ain’t gonna cut it, so what have you got to
lose?
6. Set yourself up for success by only committing to yourself to do
what you know you will do. Don’t overwhelm yourself with grand expectations, and
visions of grandeur, keep it small and simple. Instead of planning to walk 30
minutes every day, commit to 10 minutes every other day and then anything over
that is gravy! Commit to giving up sugar once a week instead of every day and go
from there.
7. Every week, make a simple, really realistic plan of
action, one that is so doable, you cannot fail. Take baby steps with this and
get very specific with your plan. Write down each little step and make sure that
when you read it over you are not questioning its viability at all. For example:
Monday morning I must be at work by 8 a.m. so I will pack my tennies, walk
for 10 minutes at my noon lunch break to meet my friend Sarah at the park. If
Sarah bails on me, I will go anyway, take a magazine or my ipod and relax. I’ll
eat my lunch, and then walk back for 10 minutes. (That’s 20 minutes of walking
and anything you do over that is gravy).
8. Do your plan with someone
else; often, people work better as a team – I know I do. I feel like the group
effort (even just two of us) is more fun, and the collaboration is great,
like when I say I don’t have time to do something, and Gail says, what about
this? We write it down, shake hands and commit to doing it. We get to check in
with each other, complain to one another, and then be revived by pep talking
ourselves back to a good place. And I know I feel a sense of “I am counting on
you,” from Gail, which makes it all feel a little more important.
9.
Visualize yourself doing whatever you have set out to do. See the action of
getting to the gym tomorrow in your mind. Or see yourself choosing the foods
that you want to eat, refusing those that you are letting go of. Go to bed
visualizing in detail your day, then let it go – sweet dreams. Don’t stress or
obsess over it. You see it, then you do it, then you own the reward of following
through.
10. Don’t stop and start over; we all screw up. You must
stay on the road – pick it up where you left off, and keep moving forward; one
unplanned muffin indulgence won’t kill you – keep moving forward on your
plan!
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