Have you ever made a change for the better that really stuck? In other words, you made a conscious shift in behavior that is now a habit that makes a positive impact in your life. Maybe its not anything you even have to think about anymore, you just do it as it is embedded into your daily routine.
With New Year’s resolutions, we often have the same ones, time after time. These tend to be focused on what we don’t have or what we haven’t been able to accomplish yet. A repeating goal, like weight loss, can have an indelible impact on our brain, causing us to think we haven’t really gotten anywhere and even worse, we never can change. Before that negativity creeps in, (which is common say around a week into January or so) ask first, what do you already do that gets you closer to accomplishing that goal.
Using the focus of health and well-being, the question becomes what is already happening that promotes your health, physically, mentally and/or spiritually. For example, how are you good to your body? Maybe you floss twice a day or ensure that you get yourself to the eye doctor once a year. Or possibly, you have successfully refrained from eating red meat. As for the mind, perhaps you’ve developed a discipline to break from working by a certain time each day. How about your spiritual self? Did you start a meditation practice in the last few months? Have you made it a point to read consciousness- expanding books? Did you decide to connect back into your faith community?
It all counts and by summoning this awareness of what you are already achieving gives a much stronger sense that “I can do it”, going forward. Knowing you’ve created a path to creating lasting change elevates your own belief in yourself and puts you in touch with the inner resources that you can do it again.