What other topic can a personal development blog cover with just a few days to go to a new year? It’s New Year’s resolutions time and I’m going to give you a few pointers on how to set ones that you will stick to and that will create powerful momentum for ongoing, positive change.Firstly, lets define what a New Year’s Resolution (NYR from here in) is, this is from Wikipedia:
“A New Year’s resolution is a commitment that an individual makes to a project or a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year’s Day and remain until the set goal has been achieved, although many resolutions go unachieved and are often broken fairly shortly after they are set.”
Sounds a lot like plain old goal setting doesn’t it? That’s because that’s what it is, only this exercise is undertaken at the end of each year.
You must take time out by yourself to figure out what it is you really want for the coming year, I mean really, really want. It must be personal and it must add juice to your life, the type of goal that makes you burst with enthusiasm when you think about it. Don’t set resolutions based on what other people want for you, you and you alone can design the life you want.
The Steps
(1) Brainstorm ideas for a better you and create compelling reasons as to why you want to achieve them. Its not all about finding out how to achieve something, you must have a strong enough ‘why’ to give you the motivation to move ahead and take action. For example if you drink too much, think of all the times you have regretted something, that you have made an ass of yourself and felt embarrassed, that you were nasty to someone that you actually cared about. Make these feelings real and decide once and for all that you must change.
Did you know the word ‘decide’ comes from the Latin ‘decidere’ which means, “to cut off”. When you decide you cut off any other possibility from occurring, you must have this strength of decision.
(2) When you start to get answers and ideas, write them down! I am 100% confident that this is the main cause of success or failure when it comes to setting goals. I am not going to go into this in great detail here because I will cover effective goal setting in future articles but reducing your resolutions to paper creates a higher level of commitment on your part, programs the subconscious mind and creates a much more definite intention.
(3) When writing the resolution be specific! A very popular NYR is to lose weight; this is a great resolution to be specific about. You must know the exact amount and by what date you will have achieved this.
(4) Be Positive. Use definite, certain language in your NYR. NEVER say I might have this or that or, I would like to be a certain type of person. Taking the last two points into consideration a great example of a written NYR would look something like this,
“By the 1st day of June 2007 I will weigh 9 stone/126 pounds/57.2 kilos”
If you just want to get fit, writing, “I want to get fit” won’t do it either. Pick a certain distance you would like to walk/run by a definite date.
(5) Write your NYR out daily. Daily?! Yes, absolutely! There is enormous power in this. When you understand how your subconscious mind works you would think it crazy not to do this. Your subconscious works ALL the time, even when you sleep. This exercise of writing your goals out daily programs your intention into your subconscious mind and creates certainty within you that what it is you want is achievable. There is a difference, however, between this exercise and writing your NYR for the first time. In your daily writings you must write in the present tense (I recommend doing this exercise first thing in the morning but you can tailor it to your own daily schedule, remember there is no limit to the amount of times you can do this, I personally have done this 10 times in a single day for all my goals). Taking the example from above again you would write:
“I now weigh 9 stone/126 pounds/57.2 kilos and it feels great!”
The little statement on the end is a way of creating a strong, positive neuro-association that will help motivate you always towards your goals. Don’t just write something to this effect though, actually feel good when you write it, generate those feelings and allow yourself to experience how it will feel when you actually achieve your goal.
(6) Visualise! Leading on from the previous point, another way of creating positive neuro-associations is to visualise your success. Use big, bright images to imagine the new you and give yourself permission to feel as though it was already true. This also activates the law of attraction, which means that you will attract to yourself the people, circumstances, blog articles 
that you require for your success. Remember, what you place your attention on, you get more of.
(7) Use Affirmations! In other words, positive self-talk. Very simply throughout the day, assure yourself verbally (preferably out loud but inwardly will suffice) that you are well on the way to achieving your goal. “Every day I am getting thinner” would be an example. When doing this, emotionalise the statement and suspend all disbelief that it is untrue for the moment. Again, allow yourself to feel good about it and repeat it over and over again until you are filled with a sense of certainty and confidence.
(8) Chunk It Down! You don’t have to accomplish the goal overnight nor should you even try. A common pitfall for people that wish to get fit is that they push themselves to the edge in the first workout, thereby creating a negative association to exercise (you can be physically ill if you push yourself too far at the beginning) and making sure that their bodies are too sore for the next workout. Be at ease with getting better incrementally. If you want to start saving, start by having 5% deducted from your wages and as you get used to this, up to 10% and so on. If you want to start walking, start by committing to just 5 minutes per day, 3 times a week and up it by a minute every week.
A whole ‘New You’ is totally possible in 2007. It’s all a matter of decision. Why don’t you decide once and for all that you are going to give yourself the body / money / partner / confidence etc.. that you deserve!
This is a long article (1252 words); you might want to print it out for future reference. This blog will provide ongoing support for you to accomplish all that you would like in life. Please consider coming back and/or subscribe to my feed. You can make sure that you are one of the few who are successful in setting NYR (10% success rate according to my research) by following the advice in this post.
If however, you are one of the ones who won’t put this into action, I’ll see you again next year when you come back to find tips on how to set effective resolutions. But don’t expect them to work unless you are willing to as well.
Mark McManus
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