Stop! Make No New Year Resolutions!

It's tradition to make New Year resolutions but how many of them do you actually keep?

By the time the excitement of the New Year's celebrations have worn off many resolutions have already been discarded like the millions of tossed out Christmas trees. You slip back into your old ways. You get comfortable. Nothing changes.

Indeed that is the crux of the matter. You want things to be better, you really do. And you really try to change your old habits and that is the dilemma. While you cannot get new results with old habits you will not be able to successfully create new results unless you toss out the old you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

"Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment if the same old lawbreaker is to keep them?"

Change is essential to growth but it is not our actions that we primarily need to change, it is ourselves and more precisely our self-image. As Master Success Coach, John Kanary, says,

"You cannot out-perform your self-image."

In other words, you will not produce results that are inconsistent with the person you truly believe yourself to be. If you do, those results will be short-lived for they will not be in harmony with the person you really are.

It is your hidden self-image that is controlling everything that you do. It operates like a thermostat. If you deviate from your set point then your self-image will pull you back into place. If you think you are a success then you will act in a manner that reinforces that view. If you think you are a failure then, whether or not you have any validity for that opinion, your self-image will, likewise, reinforce that view.

You may think that is a bad thing but your self-image is embedded in our sub-conscious mind which has one mission in life - survival. Whatever is impressed upon the sub-conscious mind stays put until we work on re-programming our mind. This re-programming means change and this represents a threat, danger even, which is why we experience such resistance when we try to impose change. Unless we recognise what is happening when we start having feelings of anxiety and doubt or otherwise feel uncomfortable with the changes we are making to improve our lives we will abandon our cause at the first hurdle.

"A goal that is casually set and lightly taken is freely abandoned at the first obstacle."
Zig Ziglar

This is why we need a powerful motivating factor for us to want to change. We need to define our purpose for it is this which will drive us forwards like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream. It gets to a point in its life when its internal programming demands that it embark upon a journey from which there will be no turning back.

Hence, even when certain behaviour patterns do not serve us we will continue to act in that way because the sub-conscious mind, as powerful as it is, knows no better. You have to change the internal programming for the external results to change and that is a challenge. James Allen, said in As A Man Thinketh:

"Men are anxious to improve their circumstance but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound."

So how do you overcome this challenge? You have to figure out who you have to be in order to do and have the things you want. In other words become the person you want to be first in your mind and then you will find it easier to act like that person.

You will need to be prepared for rejection and possible humiliation. This is not easy because as humans we want to belong and to feel connected.

You will have to be prepared to give up something so that you can have what you want. You have to create the space for what you want. For some this implies sacrifice yet you will be giving up something of a lesser value for something of a greater value.

You may have change location, change your peer group, dress differently. You will probably have to master new skills and you will definitely have to make sizable investments, and I'm not just talking money here, but your time as well in your personal development.

However, if you hold steadfast in your mind the image of not only what you what to acquire but also the person you must be in order to have those things you will be successful.

Can you do this? I believe you can. So get your pen and paper out and start planning your New Year Revolutions. No that's not a misprint. You see success means transformation - New Year, New You.