New Year’s resolutions…ugh. The source of so much anguish. I should eat better, exercise more often and quit my job for real this time. Oh wait…that was last year.
It’s time to say sayonara to New Year’s resolutions. Just chuck ‘em. You know what you have to do. You’ve always known it. You know what you should be eating, how you should be exercising, where you should be working and what sort of people you should be spending your time with. You know it.
What’s more, what you need to do isn’t complicated. It requires infinitesimal steps daily in a certain direction.
So if it’s so simple, it must follow that something is holding you back. There’s something in the way of you and your best self.
That something (you already guessed it, haven’t you?) is you. It’s many of you, nay, an army of your past selves, reminding you of every time you failed, fell off your bicycle, got picked last in gym class, got dumped, ate too much Betty Crocker cake or missed out on a promotion.
And that army, my friend, is the reason your resolutions aren’t sticking.
Some long departed version of yourself is clinging to your leg, and you’re dragging it along willingly, oblivious to the extra weight.
There’s only one way to deal with the dead weight, and it’s not by doing differently. It’s by thinking differently.
1. Tap it out with EFT
Body Tapping is one of the best ways to address and release old insecurities and life traumas, and prevent you from repeating the same old stories over and over. Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder of Mercola.com, the most popular natural health site on the net, recommends tapping for eliminating negative emotions, reducing those sugar cravings, eliminating pain and implementing positive life goals – essentially all New Year’s resolutions in a nutshell.
Tapping or EFT is an incredibly easy technique that you can use in your own home. It only takes a few minutes of gentle tapping on your body’s meridian points and saying a few important words to help your body reprogram. Mercola offers an instructional video here.
2. Stop SHOULD-ING on yourself
Every time you tell yourself “I should”, you’re effectively laying on one more layer of guilt. And guilt is toxic to New Year’s resolutions. Guilt is the reason Betty Crocker is still in business, even though her cakes are quite literally poisonous.
Ask yourself what’s behind each of your resolutions. Why do want to quit smoking, for example? Is it because others say you should or is it because you want to feel vibrant and full of energy? If the first, then ditch that resolution right now and look for some better ones (that’s an order!). If the second, then make feeling vibrant and full of energy your resolution instead. Look for a variety of experiences and small changes that support the way you want to feel. Avoid things that don’t, whenever possible, but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t manage invigorating activities 100 percent of the time.
3. Start a meditation practice (hint: it’s not what you think)
There’s a rumor out there that meditation is about reducing anxiety and relieving stress. To buy into this idea is to grossly underestimate the power of meditation. It would be like saying that big houses are good for sheltering mice and spiders – true, but also way off the mark.
Meditation is a way of connecting with your higher self, the best possible version of yourself (some people call this the God-realised self, but you can call it whatever you want). This version of your self has all of the answers you’re looking for. It knows how you feel, why you feel and what you need to do to get where you want to be. And that’s someone you want to be consulting with regularly.
4. Start collecting some new friends
Statistically speaking, your income is the average of your five best friends. If you want more money, you need to start hanging around people who make more money than you. It’s a bit sophistic, but if this is true, it follows that your level of happiness and health is also likely to be the average of these same five people.
We’re naturally attracted to people whose experiences mesh with our own, but that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to repeat this pattern. If you desire to be happier and healthier, start going where happy and healthy people go. When you start actively looking for them, they start appearing. (Hint: they’ve always been there, you just weren’t looking).
5. Clean house
The start of a new year is a great way to clear some of the clutter, both physically and mentally. By hanging onto clothes that don’t fit, pictures of lost loves or useless documents that are just taking up space, you’re going against the flow of abundance.
Start making room for the things you want. If you want to meet someone new, for example, it might be a good idea to clear the mess off the passenger seat in your car and make your house presentable at all times. Show the world you’re ready for abundance to flow.
6. Do
With all this resolving and reconsidering, it’s easy to forget that the way to make change is not to talk about it with friends, read about it online or even write it down in a journal (though all those things can be very helpful). The way to get anything done is just to do. Then do again. Then do again. Keep doing (mindfully, of course) the thing your intuition is telling you to do and you are sure to get where you want to be.
So go and start writing that book. Give your two weeks notice and buy the domain name of your future business as a reward. Call the realtor and get the house on the market. Write a love letter to the guy in your Spanish class and slip it in his locker at lunch. Whatever it is, just do.
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