5 Keys to Making New Year’s Resolutions That Stick

As we turn the calendar to a new year, we often think of turning over a new leaf and starting or resuming healthy habits that may have been ignored during the past year or even just the past few months. While most successful change involves “resolve,” simply stating a few New Year’s resolutions may not be enough to ensure success. Here are the five keys to making New Year’s resolutions that you can actually stick with throughout the year and beyond.

1. New Results Require New Thinking

People often seek change when they are at their wits end. When problems loom, we look for ways to be and do better, but this desire is often rooted in frustration and fear. Judging past attempts and failures may actually sabotage our success. Therefore, a first step toward success is to release discontent as the impetus for change. When we begin to simply notice our thoughts and feelings (about current fitness level or weight, how we compare to others, our story about past successes or failures), we make room for new thoughts and new solutions to emerge. 

In a fast-paced world, we may be more accustomed to answering urgent demands for our immediate attention than waiting, watching and being in the present moment. With patience and practice, we can learn to still the busy mind chatter (mindlessness), be vulnerable rather than reactive, and be connected to ourselves rather than cut off (mindfulness). Instead of thinking and saying “I want to lose 20 pounds…but I said the same thing last year,” we think and say, “I am willing to learn how to accept myself, including my mistakes, as I move toward my goal.” Mindful change means completely approving of ourselves and being present with who, what and where we are and wish to be, as our next step is revealed with ease and clarity. 

Formal mindfulness practices include Zen meditation, mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. However, those new to meditation and mindfulness can start with a simple, regular practice of observing the breath for a few moments. From a quiet mind, we give ourselves the option of making thoughtful decisions based on our inner wisdom. 

2. Connect Resolutions With Things You Value

“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”
—Mahatma Gandhi 

Do you wish to grow in awareness, develop a new skill, expand your knowledge, live a healthier lifestyle, master a sport, overcome a physical challenge or create a support network? So often, people begin with action rather than contemplation. However, after huffing and puffing, people often discover that activity disconnected from vision and values is short-lived.  

Awakening your own motivation for behavior change is best supported with an exploration of your values and vision for what the future may hold. What do you aspire to achieve? What drives and motivates you? What do you hope the future will hold in one year, five years and even 10 years?

Ask yourself: What’s my image of fitness and where did it come from? How am I being influenced by family, friends and the media? How have I allowed criteria from the past (e.g., my weight in school) to dictate what is right for me now? How will my life be different once I’ve made this lifestyle change? What new activities will I be able to enjoy? 

3. Break Them Down

Avoid the pitfall of vague, broad, general goals. Intentions that are specific, measureable, attainable, realistic and time-bound (SMART goals) are more likely to be achieved. Be sure goals and action steps are connected to your values; then ask how much, how many, how often, when, where and with whom. Hold onto your larger vision for the change you want to experience and then focus on each next step.

4. Build in Accountability

The best means of accountability is the one that you choose. Ask yourself: “How would you like to be accountable?” and then create an accountability process that will work for you. For example, keeping a food log or creating a weekly exercise plan may be helpful. While some people feel comfortable being accountable to friends, family members or smartphone apps, you might considering working with a health coach or personal trainer to help keep you accountable. The key is to find something that helps you gain awareness, perspective, wisdom, ideas or data that help you stay on the path to fulfillment and be able to check in with your intentions. 

5. Celebrate Efforts and Successes

Incorporating accountability provides a built-in opportunity to celebrate your efforts and progress. Seeing progress will give you the confidence and momentum you need to continue your efforts. Remember to encourage everything in the direction of your goals…all attainment, all attempts, all discoveries and even all set-backs. Awareness is curative!

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Setting goals – What if you don’t know where to start?

I hate to break it to you, but we really don’t need a new year [or even an “I’ll start again on Monday”] to provide us with an opportunity to make a fresh start. Yes, yes, I know - it’s so much easier to think that way, right?
In fact, I’ve personally being doing this for the last 10 years or so. But the fact of the matter is - it only really serves as a sugarcoating for the B.S we seem to enjoy feeding ourselves on a daily basis. 
Now, I could probably point out the overwhelmingly poor facts and figures of how many people fail their New Year’s Resolutions within the first 2 months of any new year. I could even take that a step further by visually astounding you with fancy colored graphs and pie charts.
Sure, I could do that, but should I – Nah, what’s the point? Who am I to judge [or know how to use that kind of graphical technology?]
I believe it would be far more beneficial to instead offer a little insight into goal setting strategies that I have been using over the past few years with great success. 



I hate to break it to you, but we really don’t need a new year [or even an “I’ll start again on Monday”] to provide us with an opportunity to make a fresh start.

Yes, yes, I know - it’s so much easier to think that way, right?

In fact, I’ve personally being doing this for the last 10 years or so. But the fact of the matter is - it only really serves as a sugarcoating for the B.S we seem to enjoy feeding ourselves on a daily basis. 

Now, I could probably point out the overwhelmingly poor facts and figures of how many people fail their New Year’s Resolutions within the first 2 months of any new year. I could even take that a step further by visually astounding you with fancy colored graphs and pie charts.

Sure, I could do that, but should I – Nah, what’s the point? Who am I to judge [or know how to use that kind of graphical technology?]

I believe it would be far more beneficial to instead offer a little insight into goal setting strategies that I have been using over the past few years with great success. 



The New, New Years Resolution - how to do them right [and not be on the wrong side of the fancy colored pie chart]

 

Step 1: What do you really want?

“Be clear on what you want and then go after it like your life depends on it”

So, with a clear head and an open heart - meaning before the NYE party and certainly well before you hop on the bad foot and do the worst things, take the time to ask yourself “what positive change do I want to bring into my life in 2015?”

The key phrase here is “clear head.”

Because before the hangover hits, it’s imperative that you have first powerfully envisioned an outcome in your mind, one that fills you with positive emotion, a vision that creates a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction and excitement.

Without it – I’m sorry but you ain’t got jack, nada, zip, zilch. 


Step 2: Why do you want it?  


"Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get."

Great, you’ve worked out ‘what’ you want.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, riddle me this – ‘Why’ do you want it?

Tony Robbins talks about all of our actions and behavior in life are taken to fulfill one of 6 basic human needs.

These being:

1.     Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure.

2.     Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli.

3.     Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed.

4.     Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something.

5.     Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding.

6.     Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others.

So when it comes to setting goals/resolutions for yourself, it’s of paramount importance that you know which of these needs you are trying to fulfill, and why the outcome is so important for you?

From personal experience, the needs that have provided me with the greatest sense of achievement/fulfillment are through the attainment of personal growth, and the feeling of contribution. But let’s be honest, we all want to feel a sense of significance and importance, too!

Best of all, you’ll quickly find that by satisfying just one of these basic human needs, you’ll generally be satisfying many of the others, too. #winning

Finding your why will be the thing that helps you through the tough times as you’ve found your ‘purpose’ for achieving the goal – something bigger than you. 



Step 3: Develop the dream, but don’t forget to be CLEVER about it.

“The devil is in the detail”

For years I had the dream, I even had the why, but where the devil eventually found me was not properly mapping out the details of how I was going to get there.

And if I’m honest, for many “other” years, I had the dream, I had the why, I even had the map, but gee-wizz did I make that map devilishly confusing for myself, focusing on the wrong things, at the worst times.    

It eventually just became all too hard, leaving me suffering from the dreaded ‘paralysis by analysis’ syndrome [the process by which you choose to ‘chuck-it-in-the-f**k-it-bucket-and-move-onto-whatever-is-easier-than-this-s**t’]

That is, until I learned a new technique. 

Now, if you’ve ever tried to set goals before, you’ve probably heard of the basic strategy of setting S.M.A.R.T goals. And, if you want to check out what a SMART goal is, you can find it here on last week’s Xmas post [http://bit.ly/1yzuOL8].

I think S.M.A.R.T goals are a great place to start, but let’s be honest, although being smart is a great a start, being clever is a little better.



The C.L.E.V.E.R Outcome.

Now, I’d love to claim ownership of the C.L.E.V.E.R Outcome strategy but alas it’s not mine, I picked this little gem up from Gordon Young at Beyond NLP during my NLP certification.

Basically, it takes the SMART strategy to the next level.

So let’s get down to getting that C.L.E.V.E.R outcome for you, shall we?

We now know what you want and why you want it, all we need to do now is metaphorically light it on fire by emotionally charging it even further.

The next step is to take your goal/outcome through the following process [thoroughly] to ensure it ticks all the boxes of being as powerful to YOU as possible. 

‘C’ stands for ‘Congruence’ - how does this outcome fit within my values/my overall direction? This is the fulfillment of one of your basic human needs? It needs to fit in with what you actually want from your life?

‘L’ stands for ‘Leveraged’ – when you do this, list the things that this action could cost you, what you could lose ? Or, what could you gain/benefit from in achieving this outcome?

‘E’ stands for ‘Exact’ – you need to ensure your outcome is stated using specifics, especially regarding time.

‘V’ stands for ‘Visionary’ – you need to ensure that you think about your future with imagination. You need to ensure you have a strong and powerful vision of the outcome you want, then you need to stretch it enough that it challenges you to achieve something slightly beyond your grasp.

‘E’ stands for ‘Energized’ – how can you make this outcome more compelling to you personally. How will your life look, feel, smell, taste, sound? How will you know that you have it, and that “having it” was worth achieving?

And last, but not least…

‘R’ stands for ‘’Reviewable’ – a well formed ‘clever outcome’ should be measureable against a specific criteria in order to be achievable. These will be the ‘stepping stones’ that can measure progress along the way.



Step 4: Shine & Polish

Now you’ve put it through the process, it’s time to shine and polish your goal up to make it concise, yet still powerful.

It’s a non-negotiable necessity that you write down your goal and play around with emotive words until you come up with something that really resonates with you.

It’s even more important that you put it up somewhere you can see and read it, every, single, day.

You need to read your goal as many times as possible, because if you’ve written it in the correct way, then you’ll get into the right state of mind each and every time you read it. This is where the power of goal achievement lies.





Step 5:

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there”

Once you’ve put your goal/outcome through the clever process and then made it shine. The final step is to MAP out how you’re going to achieve the outcome.

Because riding your majestic pink unicorn along the path of pleasure whilst eating all the icecream [and never worrying about putting on weight] is easy when you’re dreaming.

However, I’m sure we can agree that “dreaming the dream” is not really “living the dream”, is it?

The fact of the matter is, all that really needs to happen to make a dream a reality is to FOCUS!

Take the time to focus on everything that needs to be done to achieve the goal.

Don’t stress - the list will most likely be pretty big, but this is where you implement the ‘Pareto Principle’ [also known as the 80/20 rule] to cull down and find the 20% of the list that will return 80% of the results. 

One quick tip however, the ‘flashy’ things that sound like they would be the most fun to do, generally aren’t the things that you should be focusing on! Keep it simple, start from the beginning.

What you should end up with is an action plan with dates and times that you will have achieved each thing by. Then it literally is as simple as ticking off the boxes, because impossible is really nothing but something that requires more steps.

I really hoped this has helped you empower a few outcomes, but please remember, take your time and make it important to you!

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15 Ways to a Healthier and Happier You in 2015

It's just about 2015 and you are determined to start the year with a fresh new start towards becoming a healthier and happier person. Well you are not alone! I believe that in 2015 we can all experience more Health, Healing and Hope for ourselves and our families, but where do we begin because this is more than just a New Year's resolution? Health is a journey, a plan towards wellness that is intentional and a new way of life. Change is not easy, but it is doable one step at a time, one day at a time. Real health is about addressing our physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing, because all three are connected and affect our physical health every day. So let's begin.

Here are 15 ways to get started TODAY for a Healthier and Happier you in 2015:

1. Get a physical and get your hormone levels checked. So many cancers today are caused by an imbalance of hormones.
2. Begin to eliminate junk food, sweets, soda, boxed foods as much as possible. There is so much research that says that these alone are causing many of our diseases and remember that cancer grows in sugar.
3. Try to buy organic food and avoid all Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) or genetically modified seed. Much of the soy, corn, cotton and canola sold today are now from GMO seed.
4. Start eating healthier: more fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, seed and berries. Avoid all meats that have hormones, antibiotics, etc. Introduce coconut into your diet which gives the body needed ketones and helps with memory issues.
5. Drink organic milk, coconut and almond milk, organic tea only. Teas are like spices, they have so many nutritional benefits for the body, but avoid regular teas with hidden pesticides.
6. Drink filtered water with lemon to balance your body's pH level. Apple cider vinegar also balances the pH levels, but don't forget to add the cinnamon and honey!
7. Exercise. This isn't necessarily always big workouts, rather daily walks, stretching, weights, bicycling, jump roping, etc.
8. Detoxify. Consider a detox regime to rid your body of toxins and take fiber for daily elimination. Detoxing doesn't have to be difficult and it can bring the body back to health. Remember toxins brings disease.
9. Take salt baths, get massages and maybe see the chiropractor. Some salts have over 83 minerals and can regulate close to 325 enzymes which helps the body detox and heal. Massages and chiropractic adjustments also allows the body to rid the body of toxins.
10. Drink a smoothie everyday. Some of the things I put in mine are: organic fruits, vegetables, coconut milk, an omega 3 source, brewer's yeast (B vitamins), gelatin (collagen), and green powder with all kinds of adaptogens, herbs, plant enzymes, extracts and superfoods.
11. Take a good multi vitamin if you are not consuming a green powder every day. Research says that most of us are not getting the required vitamins and minerals that our bodies need.
12. Take a strong probiotic daily for the gut, especially if you have been on a lot of antibiotics or have yeast. Most diseases start in the gut and then proceed into the bloodstream to every organ. Probiotics build up the good bacteria.
13. Cook with a lot of spices. Research indicates that spices can change blood pressure, blood sugar and heal some diseases.
14. Get more sleep and try to reduce your stress. Meditation on God is a great way to bring your stress levels down.
15. Lastly, start reading about health. Today's changes will determine tomorrow's health. It is NEVER too late to get started!

The easiest changes occur when we work one day at a time chipping away at what seems to be an incredibly large mountain in front of us. However, today's changes will make tomorrow a better day with a quality of life that is happier and brighter for each one that meets the challenge. If we take today's health a little more serious, hopefully tomorrow's pain will be a little less, doctor visits a bit fewer and a life more full to enjoy with those we love. Wishing you all a healthier and happier 2015!

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