New Years Resolutions - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Top Tips to help you keep your New Years Resolutions in 2007

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The New Year is upon us again and no doubt many of you will embark on some sort of clean up campaign with the ultimate aim of being a better, happier or healthier person.

The New Year is a great time to review your life and to focus on those parts of it that you would like to change. It’s a time for wiping the slate clean and for starting fresh with a burst of new enthusiasm and energy.

All too often though, the inspiration and motivation we find on January 1st is short lived and our New Years Resolutions fall by the wayside. Our energy and enthusiasm runs out, the clean slate is muddied and the fresh start feels stale. It’s a bitter pill to swallow so we vow that next year our New Years Resolution will be ‘not to make any New Years Resolutions’!

This year can be different. This year you CAN make the changes you want to. So whether your resolution is one of the ten most popular or whether it is something else entirely, give yourself the chance to succeed by following my Top Tips for Success

1. Know What You Want

Achieving a goal can be likened to a well-planned shopping trip.

If you are clear about what you want and make a written list the odds are in your favour that you’ll get everything you need and you won’t end up with loads of stuff you didn’t want at all!

There are three golden rules

1. Clearly write down your goal
2. Make it specific and detailed
3. Word it in the present tense as if it has already happened

2. Stimulate your Desire

To achieve a goal you must really desire it. Desire comes from being aware of the personal benefits that achieving the goal will bring.

Knowing the benefits of your goal is critical to your success, so take some time and make a list of all the benefits that you can think of.

3. Challenge your Beliefs

A large percentage of what you belief about yourself is a figment of your imagination - it’s not the truth at all….but the thing about believing something is, that the very act of believing it makes it true. You start to think, feel and act from the belief thereby proving that it was right all along. If you change the belief, however, you’ll soon find you can prove the exact opposite.

Notice if you carry any blocking beliefs, the type that tell you I cant do this, I’m no good at this, I always fail and open up to the possibility that these are not true at all and decide to believe something more supportive. It might sound mad but it works.

4. Uncover your ‘Reasons Why Not’

We all have reasons and excuses why it is easier or safer to stay as we are and why it is better not to change. These are your ‘reasons why not’. They are the snake in the grass, the shark in the water, the black ice on a seemingly safe road. They sneak up and blind-side you when you least expect it.

Be honest with yourself. Think about your goal. Think about having succeeded in it. Is there any reason why that would not be a good thing? Do any fears come up? What are your ‘reasons why not’ ?

As you progress towards you goal keep alert to any ‘reasons why not’ that might arise and if they do challenge them head on.

5. Focus on the end result

This is the great bit. This is where a little magic starts to happen. This is the piece that makes the difference between you struggling to win the race or cruising in, not even out of breath, yards ahead of everyone else!

You’ve written down your goal, and all the wonderful benefits you’ll get by achieving it. Now start to imagine yourself having achieved it. Put yourself in to the position of having achieved it. Build a movie in your head of how you are feeling and thinking, who is around you, what does the scene looks like, what do you look like, what you are saying and what everyone else saying. Make it an Oscar winning movie. Turn up the volume, turn up the color, turn up the excitement. Feel the feelings in your body as you run the movie in your head. Feel the excitement and satisfaction, the happiness and joy and whatever other good feeling you can conjure up. Feel, think, see and hear how fantastic it is to achieve this goal.

Now do this daily. Take 3 to 4 minutes once or twice a day, run your movie in your head and really feel what it is like to be the person in that movie.

6. Take the Scenic Route not the Motorway

Most of us are pretty impatient creatures. We want results NOW. We don’t like having to wait. We start off full of enthusiasm but then very shortly we’re thinking…. this is taking too long. This is too hard. This feels like forever and it’s only been two days!

Most goals take some time to achieve so it is important that while you continue to focus daily through your movie on the overall end result, that you also break the goal down in to smaller success markers. These markers act as a constant and regular reminder of the progress you are making.

Think of it as the scenic route to success versus the motorway. With both you are focused on where you want to get to ultimately, but the scenic route has a lot of pleasant, reinforcing landmarks along the way to remind you of the progress you are making.

7. Give Guilt the Heave Ho!

Guilt is the enemy in the camp and your worst foe. The fact is, like it or not, we are all human. We are not perfect specimens of good behaviour and we don’t always live up to our highest ideals and ambitions. Sometimes we mess up, sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we do stuff that doesn’t fit with what we really want at all. This is normal. Making mistakes is normal.

But for many of us when we make a mistake we start to feel terrible. You start telling yourself how useless, and stupid you are. You give yourself such a hard time and you feel awful.

Guilt gets you nowhere. It doesn’t solve problems, doesn’t help you take action and doesn’t encourage you to try again. When you do something that is not in line with achieving your goal, notice it, own it, decide what to do about it, then forget about it and move on.

8. Be your number one supporter

As a general rule the Irish aren’t too keen to get up and say how brilliant we are. We like to blend in with the crowd and to be one of the lads. We don’t want to stand out as the one who thinks they are great.

Now is the time for you to change this. You need to become your own best supporter. You need to take every opportunity to point out to yourself how great you are doing, how much progress you are making, and how deserving you are of success. It may feel a bit uncomfortable at first but when you get in to it, it feels pretty good.

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The top ten New Years Resolutions are 1. lose weight 2. quit smoking 3. exercise more 4. spend more time with family and friends 5. improve finances 6.give up drink 7. get a better job 8. get more organised 9. become a better person 10. learn something new

Erica McKinney is a Life Coach, Healer and Personal Development Trainer working in Dublin and Wicklow. For enquiries phone 0402 36899 or email createyourlife@oceanfree.net.

© Pathway to the Soul 2006

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