Make Your Resolutions Last all Year Long
People come to see me because something isn’t working, or they are stuck, or caught in a situation that just seems impossible. It may be a vexing relationship issue, or depression and anxiety, or it may be a melancholic sadness or an old lingering shame. Whatever it is, it’s running you on autopilot. It’s the
Same old, same old patterns.
It’s these that we work on discovering in our therapy sessions together. By focusing on them, we can “shine light on them.” Often just bringing these up from the depths is enough, but when it isn’t we use any of the 12 tools we’ve outlined below to support you in moving forward for good.
1: Know the Benefits
Familiarize yourself with the benefits of making the change you desire. Get books that show the benefits of being in the now, or disclosing family secrets or being loyal to your soul’s journey. Or get my own book 7 Paths to Healing Your Relationship if you want to heal your relationship with yourself or others. Notice any changes in energy levels after you take on a new diet or how your depression and/or anxiety lifts. Imagine getting better grades or passing your bar or nursing exams after improving your study habits.
2: Use the words—STOP IT
Say “STOP IT”. This is one of the techniques I use a lot for changing bad thought patterns. When you catch yourself thinking of the undesired thought or negative thought, say “STOP IT” to interrupt the negative thinking and then reframe the issue. “I’m no good at EXERCISING REGULARLY, STOP IT!” Then reframe the issue and say—”if I treat it as a meditation I will get better at going.”
3: Create a Trigger
A trigger is a ritual we invent in the typical therapy session, you’ll use it right before executing your old habit. Let’s say if you wanted to wake up earlier everyday, the trigger we would implant in the session would be the yellow sunrise. You would imagine this as your first thought every morning—it will be your trigger.
4: Make it Simple
Don’t make giant promises to completely change your life in one session or day. It is easy to make new year’s resolutions (only 8% ever keep them according to this Forbes article) or make heroic proclamations, for a moment you get over-motivated, take on too much and then never do it again. Let’s say you have MCAT, or BAR exams coming up and you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for fifteen minutes and build on that.
5: Replace Lost Needs
If you are giving up something because you’ve identified it as a bad or negative habit, make sure you are positively and adequately replacing the underlying need you’ve lost. Let’s say you watch television because it gave you a way to relax, you could take up reading instead, or starting a hobby like painting by numbers as a way to replace that original need of relaxation.
6: Be Consistent
The more consistent you become with your new positive habit the easier it will be to become your new lifestyle. Let’s say that if you want to exercise more and focus on getting fit, try doing your exercises or going for a walk at exactly the same time and the same place for thirty days or thirty times. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is more likely to stick. This is one of the key features of why clinical hypnotherapy is so effective. Your new positive habits are cemented into your sub-conscious.
7: Commit to Thirty Days
Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a new positive habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar. Booking a series of sessions and getting supported with a buddy (me) means you get all the support you need to terminate your old negative patterns and have them replaced with positive ones.
8: Get a Buddy
Use me or find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated and on your new path, reach out when, and if you feel like quitting. Getting supported by (me) means you will get all the prizing you need and the right hypnotic protocols that will sink deep into your sub-conscious.
9: Run it as an Experiment
Withhold judgment until after the thirty days have past, treat this as a project, as an experiment in behavior modification. Think of it as an “idea in progress.” Imagine yourself as a scientist on an adventure to discover a lost continent of positive habits. Remember that experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your mind and habits.
10: Write it all Down
Write it Down – A piece of paper with a New Year’s resolution or any resolution or commitment on it isn’t important. What is important is writing that resolution. Writing it down, is a idea-motor action that respond’s back with a somatic, kinesthetic memory of what it is that you are working on. It makes your new habits clearer and focuses your mind on the new habit and behavior you desire. This is why we write things down when studying for exams.
11: Understand the Benefits
Familiarize yourself with the new positive benefits you will experience after you have accomplished or made the the change you desire. We do this in the sessions while you are in a trance like state. You will experience positive stories and understand viscerally the physical and emotional changes associated with your new positive behaviors.
12: Go Your Own Way
Try to avoid being drawn to prescriptive lists telling you what to do, how to live your life and what the perfect life hacks are to do this or that. Do what you want, when you want, BUT start something, I suggest doing it today and book a FREE session with me on the phone. I promise you a shift will happen and you’ll have a great time.