New Year's Resolutions - How To Make Them And How To Keep Them

Here's something that is going to help you turn your New Year's Resolutions into reality -

"From Resolution To Conclusion!"

I've been coaching since 1997 and the one thing I find over and over again is most people make one fundamental mistake when setting goals/New Year's resolutions:

they start (usually right about this time of year) with:

"well, last year wasn't so great, but this time it's going to be different!

So, here's why this doesn't work: fundamentally, you're trying to change a habit - right now you may be procrastinating on doing something, you maybe overeating when stressed or tired, whatever it is, it's usually a "bad" habit you'd like to change into a "good" habit.

Listen, we are all creatures of habit and unless you implement a better system and a new set

of habits AND most importantly stick to them, it's a virtual guarantee that you will go back to

doing the same things you've always done in the past.

Changing a habit is a PROCESS, not an EVENT.

Yet most people treat it like an event: "right, I'm setting my new goals now, I'll take massive action, and then everything will fall into place"

Here's why this doesn't work:

it has been shown over and over again in clinical studies with tens of thousands of participants,

that in order to change a habit for good, you have to go through a distinct sequence of stages.

And the "right, I've had enough, I'm taking massive action NOW" stage unfortunately

is near the END of that sequence.

By leaving out the stages that lead up to the "massive action" stage, your chances of success

are next to nothing.

Once you go through the sequence in the proper order, your chances of success simply skyrocket.

And the best thing is: in practice, it's actually pretty simple and easy to implement.

So, here are the stages:

To illustrate how this works, I'll use the general New Year's resolution "reduce stress" --

firstly, because it's one of the top 10 every year (and moving up in the ranks rapidly),

secondly, because it encompasses or is the cause of many related conditions so many of us experience consciously or unconsciously, ...

... such as anxiety, restlessness, distress, lowered self-esteem, procrastination ....

... and thirdly, because one of the major components of psychological stress is unstructured time.

Empty hours, goalless days, and weeks or months without any major progress can elevate anxiety

and compound depression.

(and this whole New Year's resolution thing is about setting and achieving goals, isn't it?)

BUT: you can apply this is to almost any "bad" habit you may be struggling with.

Right then, the 5 phases you need to go through for maximum success:

The first phase is called 'PRE-CONTEMPLATION'.

This is the phase where you are not really aware of the fact that you are affected by the "condition"

(I.e. that you have a bad habit). There are many people who have been chronically distressed

for years, and don't realise that there even is an alternative to their current state of being.

Just to illustrate, until I was 18 years old, I really thought that flowers were just colourful blobs

out there in the fields. It is only when I had to get glasses in order to get my driver's license, that my entire world had changed, but flowers suddenly had individual petals, (a few other things changed as well, I know could sit with the cool kids in the back of class because I no longer had to sit in the first row and squint in order to see what's written on the board!;-)

just like with the glasses, the point of this phase is to give you a new perspective, a new set of glasses to see your situation through.

Here for example stress may go unnoticed because it is masked by other behavioural problems such

as loneliness, physical aggression, over-eating, or even other avoidance behaviours that distract from the underlying issue, such as spending almost every night at gigs and concerts, doing sports excessively or uncontrolled shopping.

The key issue in this phase is that the desire to change is typically low. A consequence of this is that although we may get subtle or not so subtle hints from others that we "should" change our behaviour, we don't see it as a problem and hence do not take action.

This is a good time to seek information and ask some important questions such as "what risks

am I running by going along just as I have been?"

You can now start to see why jumping into a New Year's resolution program based on

someone else's wishes, or our "should's" without really considering it is a problem

is doomed to fail.

Right then, with the new glasses on, you now recognise that there is an alternative, now

is the time to figure out what exactly needs to change.

The next stage is "CONTEMPLATION"

This is the phase where you identify the self-defeating and self-perpetuating behaviours and their

consequences. This is all about awareness building!

If you suffer from distress, chances are that at least one of these statements is only too familiar:

"It's all my fault"

"I'll never get better!"

"I am rubbish"

"I can't do it"

"it's too hard"

"I won't do it"

a crucial step at this stage is to develop an awareness of the implicit, dysfunctional thoughts that reinforce your "bad" habits.

The objective of this phase is hence to really contemplate the consequences of the problem

behaviour.

There is tons of information on stress and distress and its consequences of there, so do some

reading about your type of distress. Ask your loved ones how they experience your distress.

( yes I know, this is a tough one! As it is them who are ready giving us enough "grief" or

aren't taking us seriously any more when we say "at this time it's going to be different")

Does your stress influence your behaviour towards them and/or your children, your

colleagues, your neighbours, your friends ...?

The answers is likely to make you uncomfortable, but this newfound self-awareness is essential for

long-term successful habit changing.

So once again you can see that if you were to jump into a "massive action New Year's resolution frenzy" without having this information and motivation, your chances of success would be very slim.

so now that you have identified your "WHY?", the next step is to prepare for "the big day".

Of course it's not a big day at the process of launching yourself into actually making change in your life.

The next phase is the PREPARATION phase.

in this phase you begin to make small changes, he start "trying out" your new desired behaviours,

you start redirecting energy and - very important -- you start preparing your environment.

This is probably one of the KEY factors that determines whether you are going to be successful or not.

The environment includes obviously all the things around you that distract you,

that discourage you, that drain your energy.

a messy workplace for example causes a lot of mental confusion, distraction and in some

cases anxiety that's drawing energy away from the one thing you should be focusing on.

Friends and relatives -- even if they want to be supportive -- may not know how to best support

you and hence do more damage than good (despite their good intentions)

another part of this phase is to put into place environmental checks, I.e. mechanisms that enforce

and/or reward good behaviour and punish "bad" behaviour appropriately. (Bashing yourself over

the head or scolding yourself is NOT the way forward!)

Once again you see if this vital component is not in place your chances of changing your behaviour in the long-term are next to nothing.

it's a bit like going camping for the weekend: you wouldn't just walk out of your house, into the forest, and set up the tent without doing any preparation for the camping trip. In practice you would check the weather forecast, you would buy some supplies, you would probably check that the tent is complete and you would tell people where you're going.

Get in practice, when setting goals or new years resolutions, that's exactly what people do.

No preparation, just plain walking out the door, and hoping for the best.

So, with all this in place it is now time for the ACTION stage.

This is the stage people typically plunge straight into when setting a goal or a New Year's resolution.

Yes, this is where you take action, where you enlist all the help and support you can from others and

by creating a sense of accountability to others and to yourself.

This is where you take your well crafted plan and put it into action.

And: follow-through until completion.

And if you do this until the new behaviour becomes a habit.

because you have to focus time and resources on the "core activities" necessary for the achievement of your resolution and because they're always more things to do than there are time and resources available to do them, you must hold yourself accountable to deadlines and adjust your tasks accordingly.

And you know from practice that this is easier said than done.

And that's precisely why most people fail with their goals.

but, if you took those previous step seriously and actually figured out the big "WHY", identified self sabotaging thoughts and resulting behaviours and implemented a supportive environment, then your chances of success at this action stage are vastly improved.

going back to the stress example, stress or distress to be operates in a vicious cycle. Stress gives rise to effect that can in turn calls for the stress. But now you understand the cycle due to the prep work you have done on it and hence interrupted that cycle at the correct points and hence stop it.

A key is that you are assertive and active in this phase and treat your behaviour like a problem that needs to be removed from your life for good.

Clinical research shows that if you are passive or dependent then you will find it very difficult

to correct your thoughts, alter relationships and feel more capable and vital.

so, let's assume you've now developed a new behaviour but the supporting you in every way.

The problem is, quite often, whilst enthusiasm is high, we keep doing this new behaviour, but after a while life gets in the way and we drop it.

In other words the new behaviour has become a habit.

And this is where the final stage comes in: the MAINTENANCE stage.

Like I said, the objective is not to pull out of individual episodes of stress, but rather maintain

a stress free life.

Here it is important to recognise that stressful situations can always arise, there will always be

temptations, distractions and setbacks.

The key of this phase is hence to acknowledge these facts and develop mechanisms for dealing with them.

A major point is that it is a lot easier to maintain your resolution or goal or how it then it is to

regain it.

But, if the WHY you have developed in the contemplation phase is big enough it will be

much easier to stay on course and if you hadn't.

So once again you see why it is so vital to go through this process in a particular sequence,

rather than jump straight into the action phase, which is what most people do when they set a

goal or a New Year's resolution.

there is a great thing, there's a really simple test for figuring out in which phrase you are:

using the examples of stress or distress, use whatever resonates most with you, think of an example and answer the following three questions:

1.Are you seriously considering overcoming your distress within the next six months?

2.Are you planning to overcome distress in the next 30 days (and perhaps taking small steps to do so)?

3.I you know actively overcoming your distress?

Now look at the combination of answers you give to each question:

If the answer is no to all questions then you are in the precontemplation phase.

If he only answer yes to question one then you are in the contemplation phase.

If the only 'no' is to question three, then you are in the preparation phase.

And if you answered yes to all three questions, then you are in the action phase.

Now if you are in the action phase, go through the other phases mentally and see if you have done the necessary groundwork to make sure that you can succeed in the action phase.

if you are in any of the other phases, and you now have a guide to help you ask the right questions,

the powerful questions that help you build a great foundation on which you can successfully reach your goals in 2010.

Spend some time on this, it will definitely be worth your while.

Please share any insights you're having

and I wish you all the very best of 2010