According to Journal of Clinical Psychology:
- the percent of people who are successful in achieving their new year resolutions is a meagre 8%
- People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions
- Resolution are maintained through first week 75%
- Only under 50% are still keeping their new year resolutions after 6 months
I don’t know about you, but when I have tried to use will power to try to change my behaviour, it can do it for a while but then I tend to swing back in the opposite direction!
Here are 5 steps to turbo charge your new year resolutions which don’t involve will power:
Step 1: Choose the right new year resolution
You might already have an idea about what you want to achieve or avoid. Here are the top 10 new year resolutions for 2014 according to the Journal of Clinical Psychology :
Top 10 New Years resolutions for 2014 Journal of Clinical Psychology. Image courtesy of instagram.com/artastrophic
Lets look at number one – losing weight and some of the possible emotional benefits:
- have more energy and fitness leading to feeling happier
- feel more self-love and self-accepted
- feel more love and acceptance from others
Wanting this intention, may imply that one does not already feel much happiness, love or acceptance so maybe the deeper intention is to:
- feel happy
- love and accept myself
- feel more love and acceptance from others which is more likely to happen if you love and accept yourself
Step 2: Find your inner resistances to your New Year resolution
So lets take an example from the above of wanting to love and accept oneself more. Your reaction might be:
- but I already love myself, its just that I need to change my body in order to love myself more
- or its conceited to love myself so that is not my intention!
- or of course I want to love myself – why would I resist it!
Lets go with the thread that you do want to love yourself more. You could at this stage do some Positive EFT on loving yourself.
Another way would be to ask yourself these questions such as these and write down the first thing that comes to mind without censoring:
- I don’t want to love myself because…
- I can’t love myself because…
- I mustn’t love myself because…
- I want to love myself because…
Some answers might be:
- …I’m not good enough
- …I don’t deserve to love myself
- …I’m too bad to love myself
- …I want to be happy
There will probably be several answers to each question so keep repeating the question to yourself. It is important to ask why you want to love yourself as well as don’t want to because whenever there is an attachment to one of the answers, it may be holding you back from simply allowing the intention into your life.
Step 3: Release your resistances
Once you have all your answers, rate them on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is that you don’t really believe it at all and 10 is that you totally and completely believe it. Pick the answer with the highest number and either do some classical EFT on each resistance which is a simpler, general and usually slower approach. Do this on each answer from step 2.
So for example here is what you would say to tap on if you were tapping on not feeling good enough:
Tapping on the karate chop point say three times:
“Even though I don’t feel good enough to love myself, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”
Tap on these points (go round twice) and say repeat the reminder phrase “I don’t feel good enough”
- Top of head
- Start of eyebrow
- End of eyebrow
- Under eye
- Under nose
- Under lower lip
- 1 inch below collar bone and 1 inch across from breast bone
- Under arm (on bra line for women and parallel to nipple for men)
Check the rating and keep going until the rating is zero.
Alternatively find an (ideally early) event in your life that underpins this belief and do the EFT Movie Technique on that event until the rating is down to 0.
Go back to the belief and check the rating on it. If it is not zero, find another event and keep going until it is 0. Do this on each answer to each resistance.
Step 4: Visualise the new you as if you already have achieved your new year resolution
According to the Law of Attraction and the film The Secret, the more you can visualise or create an image and feeling of what you desire to already present in your life, the more aligned you will be with that goal or intention.
So here, my suggestion is to make a picture or sketch or vision board or simply cut out an image that makes you feel good with respect to your New Year resolution and look at it regularly or put it up on your wall. Or you could write some inspiring affirmations and put them on cards around your home. In the example of loving yourself, you might write:
- I am beginning to love myself more and more each day
- Today I choose love with every breath
- I love and accept myself today just the way I am
Do Positive EFT on a title of the image or picture or on the affirmations you have created while visualising or imagining this has already happened.
Step 5: Celebrate your journey to achieving your new year resolution
In a gratitude journal, write and celebrate the blessings that life offers you that are in alignment with and moving towards your New Year Resolution.
If you are a mum who wants to have feel happier in herself, with her children check out my book Frazzled to Fabulous in 5 Minutes a Day Follow my quick and easy step-by-step programme here https://www.frazzledtofabulous.com/
I would love to hear how your New Year resolution journey unfolds – what worked, what didn’t and other ideas, tips and suggestions.
Wishing you a wonderful 2018 filled with joy, love, health, laughter, abundance, bliss and magic.