As a therapist, I always get a flood of people who want to achieve their goals around the new year. Then, a month goes by and many of those same people come back feeling discouraged, expressing self-recriminations and feelings of failure. This is a very common human experience: we set lofty goals for ourselves, imagining that we will build ourselves up into the person we imagine we’re supposed to be. Then, when we find those goals difficult to achieve, we tear ourselves down for not achieving them. RELATED: 43 New Year’s Resolutions Every Parent (And Their Kids) Should Make But, beating yourself up is never productive. Doing so only creates a sense of rejection — created by the self to the self. It doesn’t help the goals become realities. It only hinders the process of growth. The best way to move toward achieving those New Year’s goals is to pay attention to the smallest changes that you did make and congratulate yourself for those. Then, build on those positive feelings to achieve more.
Here are 3 simple but effective steps for achieving your New Year goals, even if you’re slipping.
1. Embrace baby steps.
This is so important. If your goal was to change a habit for the year, but you only managed to do it for a week. Be kind to yourself and reward yourself. The greatest changes happen from small, baby steps of change. Often, people think they’ll go from step 1 to step 10. But, in reality, small steps are the key to achieving success.
2. A deeper change occurs on the subconscious level.
When change occurs on the subconscious level, those changes are more truly achieved. There are multiple ways to achieve this. One is through hypnotherapy. But if you don’t have access to hypnotherapy, another technique is using the tool of writing your goals every morning when you awaken. Repeating this process helps plant the seeds in the mind. But remember again in your writings: be kind to yourself. RELATED: Why ‘Inner’ New Year’s Resolutions Are The Key To Creating External Change
3. Give yourself permission to shift your beliefs around the concept of “failure.”
There are no failures, only feedback. This feedback is telling us there is another way. Let go of rigidity. Think of it this way: if the freeway is closed, you don’t park and give up. You take a detour. There’s always an opportunity for a different way to do things. People ostensibly set goals for the year, or in most cases, for their entire lives, and it’s odd that they talk about new year’s resolutions most in January, and then discussion of them disappears until next year. But trying to accomplish your new year’s resolutions all in one step is as silly as trying to eat a huge meal all in one bite. It just doesn’t work. Taking smaller bites is what works. If you try to change too much at once, the ego resists, because nobody likes change, especially not the ego. The ego prefers to say, “I’m just fine exactly the same way I am, thank you very much!” Sometimes people forget this, get frustrated, and label their missteps as “failure”. And it probably does feel like failure at the time. By February, they’ve given up on their New Year’s goals. But change is never instantaneous or simple. That negative self-talk in which you label yourself as having failed just creates pain and makes you want to turn away from the whole endeavor. The fact is, the most successful achievement of goals happens in baby steps, and recognizing and congratulating yourself for achieving those small, incomplete, imperfect steps with a positive internal monologue. Think of how you would lovingly encourage a friend who was struggling with a steep hike to either stick with it, or to take a moment’s rest in the shade if they needed to, or not to feel embarrassed about choosing to turn back and try again another day. That’s how kind you should be to yourself, at the new year, and every month of the year. You are no less deserving of exact same amount of patience, love, and compassion when you speak to yourself than when you speak to a cherished friend. On your path to big changes, always remember that they happen only through small changes, undertaken with great patience and love. RELATED: The Myth Of Willpower — Why So Many New Year’s Resolutions Will Fail
