Forgive Your Failures

Forgive Your Failures, New Year’s Resolutions

by Alice Stacionis

It is already the middle of January and the festivities of the holidays are over, and perhaps the well meant and desired resolutions …dead.

With the holidays comes a lot. The over indulging perhaps the excessive stress as focus is on family and all the family issues triggered by being together or not being together. As New Year’s comes it is a good feel that all that goes with the holidays is over. It feels good to say these things like, I am going to lose weight, I am going to exercise, I am going to “whatever”. And about this time we need to make ourselves feel good from the emotionally charged holidays.

And now to why these well meant resolutions are over and how they don’t have to be. Whether you like to make them or not, research has found that people who make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions. Yet as you know, it’s not so easy to keep your resolve as life returns to normal and your old habits of mind and action start testing your resolve and pulling you away from the new ones you resolved to create.

Change is difficult, yet as hard as it is, everyone has the ability to make and keep meaningful changes in their life, regardless of their age, or how well worn their habitual ways of engaging in the world.

Perhaps as you call your intentions resolutions in your mind’s eye you call them goals and follow thru with these following seven tips. Goal setting is a process of carefully choosing what you want to achieve and putting a plan in place to achieve it. You are firmly in charge of your own life and can choose living by design rather than default.

Seven Strategies for Highly Effective New Year Goal Setting.

Know Your Why.

For a resolution to work, it has to be aligned with your core values. We all want to look better or attract more prosperity, but the resolutions have to go beyond superficial desires and connect with what truly matters to you. So you must “Know your why” and feel truly passionate about the goals you set for yourself. If you don’t then when the going gets tough you won’t have the resolve to stick to your plan. When your goals are connected to a deep sense of purpose it compels you to see the bigger picture. You will dig deeper and stay the course when the going gets tough.

Be Specific

Resolutions to “eat better, get fitter, be happier, relax more or have a better life balance’ are doomed to fail because they lack specific details. The more specific you are the more likely you will be to succeed. Find and put together a plan for tracking your successes.

Don’t just think it, put it to the next step, write it.

Writing it takes it to the next step and if need be leave sticky notes in places to keep your goals in your mind whereever you are.
Design your environment to support your goals.

If it’s fitness make sure your kitchen is stocked with foods that only support your goal. Keep a list of restaurants that have healthy meals. Create a progress chart, enlist a cheer squad around you to keep you on target, join a group, start a blog. Likewise if there are people around you that pull you down set boundaries, set boundaries right up front. .
Limit your goals.

Trying to do too many things at once will make you very unfocused and likely not to truly succeed in any of them. Take one major undertaking at once and break that down into bite sized pieces. Small steps, strong start.

Focus on the process.

It is easy to get caught up in the initial enthusiasm to only come crashing down when you don’t see immediate results. Focus on the process and celebrate the regular small successes. Persistence pays off… Do a little more and a little more and those little successes become bigger and bigger.

Forgive your failures.

We are all human and will have failures but the failures don’t define your success, how you respond to them does. If you happen to mess up, lose your resolve, press the snooze button or revert to a familiar well-practiced behavior, don’t beat yourself up. When it comes to slipping up and tripping up, you are in good company. It happens to everyone. Just don’t let your failures mean more than they do. Reflect on the lessons they hold, make adjustments accordingly. Life rewards those who work at it.
Hypnosis is a great assist when putting together your program. Find a hypnotist near you a and make him/her your buddy. You will be able to see that the new year resolution will be a goal achieved.

Alice Stacionis