New Year Resolutions
Is the new year the best time to make changes that will affect the rest of your life? Yesterday (new years day) I was asked by a presenter on BBC Southern Counties radio whether or not I believed in making resolutions at new year. My reply was that I don’t make resolutions myself and never have. Most people I know who make them tend to fail within weeks if not days. An exception is a good friend who always resolves not to drink alcohol for the whole of January, in order to make up for the excesses over the Christmas/new year period, and he usually succeeds. He, like many of us, enjoys a few drinks when socialising, so stopping for one month is realistic and achievable as all goals should be.
Resolutions often fail when we resolve not to do something such as giving up smoking or starting a diet. The reason for failure is due to the fact that the focus is on deprivation instead of gain. If you are a smoker and enjoy smoking and decide to give up to save money or to improve your health you are depriving yourself of pleasure. At the same time you may feel that stopping smoking is a painful experience. More pain + less pleasure is not a good recipe for success. At thespencepractice we help smokers by associating their habit with a great deal of pain/discomfort and by associating lots of pleasure to not smoking in the future.
Neil was in a similar situation with his desire to lose weight. Over the years his weight crept up to 28 stone and it was literally threatening his life. The traditional method of a strict diet, depriving himself of food that he enjoys and regular visits to the gym did not provide Neil with any feelings of pleasure. Despite the discomfort of being so overweight the pain associated with deprivation over a long period of time prevented him from achieving his goal. Visit Neils page on this website http://www.thespencepractice.co.uk/weight-loss-success-story.html to find out how he turned things round and is continuing to enjoy his journey towards health and fitness.
Setting goals and working towards them is much more motivating than making resolutions that are unsustainable. If you want to find out how to set goals and achieve them contact thespencepractice today and see if we can coach you to success.
