Motive Your Self To Keep Your New Years Resolutions

When it comes to sticking to new years resolutions the majority of people fail no later than the six week mark. This can be seen everywhere, the best example of this is in the diet and exercise sector. If you’ve ever gone to the gym over the November to March period you’ll have noticed a funny thing happen. All though December the gym seems to get quieter and quieter as people wind down for Christmas, however, as soon as January hits attendance shoots though the roof, way higher than any other time of year and as January comes to an end things slowly start to return to normal again until about the middle of February when they normalize again. Making Resolutions Stick If you really want to stick to your resolutions you need to leverage what is often referred to as the pain and pleasure principle. This means making your current situation as painful as it really is and your desired goal as pleasurable as possible. Pain One of the best ways to utilize the pain part of the principle is to make a list of all of the things that are painful about the situation you’re in. Take five minutes to do this, don’t think about it just write down everything that comes to mind. Now, think about all of these things and how they make you feel. You’ll be tempted to use what are called softeners to rationalize why you’re in this situation in the first place, things like ‘Well, it’s not really that bad’, don’t do this, softeners start to appear at the beginning of the road to failure. Assess the situation for how it really is and how it really makes you feel. Confront your anxieties, if you’re over weight, you want to lose it and don’t like looking in the mirror, you must get naked and look at yourself in the mirror, this will make you feel uncomfortable and that’s fantastic, it’s the type of motivation you ‘ll need to achieve your goal. Pleasure You need to make your goal as pleasurable as possible. Take another five now to write a list of all the things that sticking to your resolution will bring. If weight loss is your goal, how will it feel to be slim and be able to fit into those smaller size clothes? How will your health improve? Once you have your list made your list visualize yourself living as you want to live. Make it as real as possible. If you’re not moved into action by your visualization it’s not strong enough and you need to stack more positive reasons onto achieving your goal. To give yourself the best chance of making your resolution stick you must see you situation for how it really is, without all of the softeners you typically use to kid yourself into feeling better. The worse you feel about your current situation and the better you feel about your goal the higher your motivation to reach it will be.