A New Year, A Fresh Start!
We all know that a new year is a time for a fresh start, the ideal opportunity to commit yourself to doing the things you know you should be doing, whether in your personal or professional life.
Time to make some new years resolutions!
The most common resolutions of coarse are wanting to lose weight, or build more activity into your life, or maybe it’s to give up or cut back on smoking or drinking alcohol or coffee. For others it’s the desire to become more organised and efficient in their professional lives or maybe it is to have a better work- life balance going on so they can enjoy their down time and not always feel exhausted from the pressures of the job. For others it’s to manage their finances better, to have a strict budget and religiously stick to it. For those who are single, separated, divorced or widowed it’s finding an online dating site or a dating agency in Dublin or Cork or Limerick or Galway or indeed anywhere in Ireland, so they can find “a special someone” to share their life with. The list is endless!
Want It With All Your Heart!
Yet we all know that most people throw in the towel a few weeks into making the resolution. So what can you do differently to make sure you stick to your resolutions in 2018?
The first thing is that you must want the change with all your heart and mind. There’s no point in even starting if you’re only half-hearted about it. When you are certain that you want it much more than what you have at present, then get a note book and write it down. It is well documented that by committing our goals and aspirations to paper drastically increases our chances of success.
Commit! Commit! Commit!
Pick one goal or aspiration and take tiny steps every day towards achieving it. Don’t expect miracles after the first two weeks because you are only setting yourself up for disappointment. Remember that whatever habit you want to change probably took years to develop in the first place, so it’s going to take a while to change your thinking and behaviour to eradicate it out of your life for good. Once you accept this reality and are willing to take tiny steps over a long period of time you are on your way! In his book Commit! Enda McNulty suggests that we give ourselves at least ninety days to work on improving any area of our life.
Your Imagination Will Add Oomph To Your Resolutions!
What really adds oomph to your goal is by imagining that you have already achieved it. Use your imagination and visualize that you are already two dress sizes smaller, or that you are feeling much healthier as a reformed smoker, or that you have met your ideal partner. By doing this, along with using positive affirmations, you are sending encouraging messages to your subconscious mind that will become a reality in your life when practised daily.
As Aristotle said, “we are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an art but a habit”.