New Year Resolutions - Have Your Family and Friends Sabotaged You?

When we start a New Year, it is traditional to make a new beginning and we all have ideas about how we are going to make this year much better than the last one. One time honored way is by creating lists of permanent changes we are going to make - the New Year Resolution list! Is your list in the wastebasket after only a few months?

New Year Resolutions are permanent changes for the better. Yet, if you are like most people, all the good intentions have faded and you are back on the same path you were last year; if you made it through February, you persisted longer than most people do. Why is this?

The problem is your self image. For the previous year and a great deal longer, you have viewed yourself exactly as you are - overweight, a smoker, time waster or whatever else about yourself you wish to change for the better. This picture is YOU! You see it every day and other people see it everyday. You and others demand that it be you because to your conscious mind, and the family and friends around you, it IS you!

Interestingly, making a change in yourself bothers people that know you! It doesn't matter whether the change is positive or negative. So, not only are you having to deal with your own personal obstacles to change, you get piled on by those around you. Sadly, the people that are closest to you, family and dear friends, are the worst offenders.

If your self improvement program has been scrapped for the New Year, you need to examine why. Look at things within yourself that blocked you and look at the people around you that contributed to keeping you as you are. I think you will be surprised at how much others have worked to maintain the "old" you.

When you realize this exte
al, unexpected block to your positive change is in operation, you can take charge of it. It's not too late to get back on track. Want to lose weight? You CAN do it. Want to quit smoking? You CAN do it. But it requires a firm resolve to change and a resistance to those around you keeping you as you are.

Let's look at the desire to be thinner as an example. A starting place to identify obstacles to your goal to lose weight is your family. If you are a man, look at a picture of your father at your current age; if you are a woman, look at a picture of your mother. Now, it is important to look at a picture of your parents when they were the age you are now (younger pictures do not reflect the current reality). What do you see?

For myself, I saw that I was inadvertently looking just like my father who was out of condition and developed a large gut. It didn't help that my relatives said, "Oh, he looks just like Jack!" Of course, my first inclination and I'm sure yours would be as well is to deny it. NO WAY! I don't look anything like my father!

But they were right; I had slowly morphed into the physical image of my father. My father died in 1991 at the age of 61. He was actually just 6 months into his 61st year and died of a heart attack. I pulled a picture of dad and had to admit, I was on that path.

Well, I am sure that my father did not want me to end up like he did. With that in mind, I started a weight loss program and today, I don't look like my father. I'm sure that he would be proud of that fact!

However, if your parents are still alive and they have weight problems, they may unconsciously support the current overweight you (Look how many overweight parents have overweight children); it is the YOU they know. Your long time friends will be the same way. I actually had a friend tell me I was losing too much weight!

Think about this for a moment. I have worked diligently to trim myself up so I would not end up like my father. It's taken a while, perhaps five months, but I have been losing the fat and am getting back to what I weighed in my early twenties (almost 40 years ago). I have been going by the book for proper body fat percentage (modern digital scales are great!), and I look and feel better tha
I have in years. Yet, this close friend, who I have known for 30 years tells me I am losing too much weight? What they were actually saying is I'm not the image they've known for 30 years and it disturbs them! It is a reaction, not a thought process; a resistance to change.

You have to overcome this exte
al block to losing weight from family and friends. They are only doing it because they view the overweight self as YOU when of course, it is not. You have to realize that to be in better health is not disrespectful to your parents who may not be in good health. To look and feel better should not be offensive to close friends who perhaps, don't choose to be in better health.

You are your own person! Parents and friends may be uncomfortable with you changing your body image but, YOU have to live with the consequences. Just as I decided I did not want to end up like my father, you have to decide that you too, want to be healthy and have a positive body image.

So, if your New Year Resolutions fell apart, look at the people around you and see how they contributed. THEN, get back on TRACK! You can do it!

(c) 2012, R. Michael Stone, M.S.