January – the month of good intentions…?
Raise your hand if you made a new years’ resolution on Dec 31st?
Keep your hand raised if you’re still sticking with it……. good work!!! Go enjoy your reward and see you next month!
Now, for the rest of us… what happened?
Many people make resolutions in the hope that the new year will fill them with some amazing new sense of motivation and will that allows them to hit the gym five days per week, or completely give up sugar or alcohol, or make sure they check off their lists each day to keep on top of their life. And it works for a little while! But sadly, the ticking over of a giant clock on a tower doesn’t imbue us with any new magic – we’re still the same people we were at one minute to midnight as we are at one minute after midnight. So how can we change that person into someone who enjoys 5am runs or completely abstains from coffee and cake?
The sort answer is: with great difficulty.
You can change your habits, but you need to know WHY you want to change them. For change to stick, the reason behind it has to be truly valid for you, otherwise excuses start to creep in and it all starts to crumble.
For example, say you want to start going to the gym more often. On the surface you may just want to lose weight, but that’s the kind of reason that is quickly toppled by excuses (it’s raining! it’s cold! I’m tired! I’m hungover!). If your reason for losing weight carries more weight, however, those excuses seem more flimsy by comparison and are less likely to work. Reasons such as preventing heart disease which might run in your family or wanting to be able to engage with your kids for more than 3min at a time tend to be the reasons that keep people on the right track far more effectively than a vague sense of wanting to weigh less than they do now.
Finding someone to help you work out the ‘why’ of your habit change can help make that change achievable long term. Sometimes it will simply be a matter of spending an hour or two hashing out what’s really important to you, where your priorities lie, what you’re willing to give up or put on the backburner and what you truly want to achieve.
Once you have that worked out, you’ll be better able to plan your changes and set yourself up for success, rather than setting yourself up for failure.
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