Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions

In early January many of us may have made some New Year’s resolutions. Equally, but unfortunately, some of us may have already broken them! Why is this? Often it’s because our resolutions are shoulds and, even worse – other people’s shoulds – “I really should go down to the gym more often” or “you really should give up smoking”.

Tony Robbins, a well known American personal development coach, says people do things for one, or a combination of two reasons – to move away from pain and/or to move towards pleasure. He goes on to say that in order to stick at something you need to make it a “must”, not a “should”. To do this we must link sufficient pleasure or pain to a particular action to make lasting change.

For example, the pleasure in going to the gym is often not in the exercise itself (indeed this is the pain for many of us), but in feeling vibrant and healthy, being able to fit into your trousers/skirt or looking good and feeling confident. We must associate the resulting pleasure of doing something as being greater than the pain we link to doing it.

The reverse is true, when we are trying to stop doing something or break a bad habit. Going on a diet is usually perceived as painful – we will miss out on all those foods we enjoy. Therefore to be successful, we must make the pain of feeling overweight greater than the pain of missing out on our beer or chocolate.

Once you have associated the necessary pleasure in doing something or pain in not doing something, lock it in by building it into your resolution (New Year’s or otherwise). For example, rather than “I will do my exercise routine three times a week”, change it to something like, “I will be my ideal weight, keep fit and feel great by going to the gym three times each week.”

For those of you who would like to take action on sticking to your resolutions or goals, why not take up the offer a free coaching session, to work specifically on this area.