Why bother to make resolutions and then feel disappointed or guilty for breaking them? Do you get excited and resolve to change, but within days or weeks lose interest and can’t motivate yourself? Wonder why you get sidetracked by distractions or become easily discouraged when quick results aren’t forthcoming? The problem is threefold:
* Terminology. When you think about goal setting, you realize that it’s a process and that requires effort to reach your target; whereas a resolution is a decision or intention. It has to be more than a wish, but it’s only the first step in reaching a goal. There’s no implication that planning or effort is involved. It’s as if saying it makes it so. Naturally, it doesn’t. Change isn’t easy. Instead of making several New Year’s “resolutions,” make ONE you can keep, and it will give you confidence that you can do more.
* Motivation. Change requires work. To be motivated, your heart has to be in it. To realize your goals and resolutions, you must be inspired and really want to make the effort necessary to leave your comfort zone. Inspiration infuses you with energy and power. It stimulates your creativity, promises a better future, or connects you to a larger purpose. It fills you with positive emotions that overcome fear and inertia. Love mobilizes parents to work hard and protect their children, disregarding their own comfort and safety. For change to last, make sure your motive expresses your true self and fosters your highest good. Your goal must be congruent with your core beliefs. Resolutions to make changes for someone else’s approval, for monetary gain, or because you think you “should” are hard to sustain.
* Self-Discipline. In addition to desire and motivation, you need self-discipline. It’s been said that success is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. Change requires focus and sustained effort before results are noticeable. The process is not a straight path, but a spiral of movement forward, slips, stagnation, and leaps ahead. It’s easy to get discouraged and be swayed by the pull of habit. Expect to feel discomfort. You may feel confused, awkward, or anxious. Studies show that on average that changing habits requires at least two months of vigilant monitoring, and they still sneak up on you. Be patient. Continue to exert your will-power, and over time your persistence will pay off.
For years, every January I’d make resolutions and set goals for the coming year. Twelve months later, I’d see if I’d accomplished them, never considering the “how to” middle part. Of course, “good intentions” didn’t get me very far. Here are five tips that I’ve learned:
1. Create an action plan. I’d get overwhelmed and lose confidence when I thought about a major goal. Break it down into smaller steps by month, week, and daily to-do lists. Actionable steps become manageable and doable.
2. Heighten self-awareness. People often seek therapy to raise their self-esteem or overcome addictions and codependency. If your resolution is to change your habits, self-awareness and vigilance are needed in order to interrupt old patterns. Daily meditation and journaling are potent and helpful tools in monitoring and changing your thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
3. Encourage yourself. Discouragement is normal. Become a positive coach, and continually give yourself positive feedback, praise, and recognition. Look for small signs of progress and celebrate them. If you have low-self-esteem, you may talk yourself out of your desires and think you lack the skill, worth, or ability to achieve them. Underlying depression does the same thing. Self-doubt and negative self-talk paralyze you in a past expression of yourself. They sap energy and motivation, and can easily persuade you to give up.
If you aren’t making progress or slip into old habits, don’t dwell on your “mistake.” Rather than stay stuck in self-judgment and guilt, admit what you did or didn’t do, and quickly get back on track. Stay solution-oriented. Ask yourself, “What am I going to do about it?” Self-forgiveness improves both self-esteem and future behavior.
4. Have a vision. To create a powerful motivation for change, picture yourself as you’d like to be and see yourself happy and confident behaving in the new way. Rather than focusing on what you don’t want, focus on what you desire. Here are some suggestions to manifest the new you:
* Draw the future you.
* Imagine what it would be like if you were the future you in this moment. See yourself carrying out your New Year’s resolutions. Notice the expression on your face, and experience how you would feel in your body. See the future you as having accomplished your goals. Experience yourself feeling proud, happy, and confident. See people in your life responding favorably to you.
5. Get support. Some changes entail facing the unknown or a perceived danger, such as life after a divorce, moving to a new city, or standing up to intimidation. They require courage, and support can be a great help. Addictions and habits are hard to break, especially if they’re driven by temptation, like drugs, food, and sex. Support and encouragement from friends, family, a mentor, support group, or therapist are vital until new patterns are established as part of your self-definition.
Many people make changes on their own. If it’s been difficult for you, or if you find it hard to muster motivation and self-discipline, it may be that an internal shift is required before anything external can permanently change. Sometimes, unconscious beliefs about yourself and what’s possible hold you back. Consider that therapy can lift depression and move you through the challenges outlined above. It can raise your self-esteem, facilitate insight, and guide you in facing the unknown and maintaining new behavior.
Copyright Darlene Lancer, MFT, 2011. Darlene Lancer is a therapist in Santa Monica, CA. Visit Darlene Lancer’s website, www.darlenelancer.com, to learn more about depression counseling. You can also get a FREE REPORT “From Self-Criticism to Self-Esteem” by e-mailing info@darlenelancer.com or calling 310-458-0016.
For more information...
therapy
Filed under Motivation · Tagged with advice, counseling, Goal Setting, goals, health, holidays, mental health, Motivation, New Year, psychology, psychotherapy, resolutions, self help, social issues, therapy
Fitness will be the goal of a lot of people. People spend millions of dollars a year on exercise products, gym memberships, health supplements and weight loss supplements, all of these to try and achieve fitness. While others of these products may work, some fail to and may even, have the opposite result. Simple step such as quitting from smoking and shifting to using best electronic cigarette can be a effective way for achieving good health and being fit follows.
Do not be afraid of strength training if you’re a woman. Getting stronger does not always mean you will definitely be bulky unless you are trying to choose that look! Being stronger can help you in every day life and prevent injuries when conducting things around the house.
Experiencing difficulty maintaining your exercise? When you only train in a gym that will be part of the answer why try some outdoor exercising so that you can enjoy clean air and nature and utilize best stog electronic cigarettes, this will invigorate your workout routine and breathe new life into your persistence to fitness.
Get yourself some good fitness and workout DVDs. These will be incredibly motivating, and varying your regular workout to incorporate different exercise sessions will continue from getting bored. Also, it can never matter what weather conditions is outside. In case you have some high-quality workouts on DVD, you will stay fit by performing exercises anytime you like.
You will work your out of the house harder with a little different hand placement. If you are doing lap pull-downs, rather than wrapping your thumbs throughout the bar, put them alongside your index fingers at the top, this will create your back work much harder since your arm muscles are performing less work.
In conclusion, if fitness is a kind of goal for many people, they must first stop from other vices such as smoking and shift to using best stog electronic cigarette simply because it offers you all the assurance of healthy smoking. Millions of money is spent each year on exercise products, gym memberships, diet supplements and pills for losing weight. Most of these products don’t actually work as well as turn up, working against fitness. In case you remember the fitness methods in this short article, you may avoid the useless methods and achieve fitness with methods that really work.
Learn more about best electronic cigarette. Stop by Stog.com site where you can find out all about stog and what it can do for you.
For more information...
Goal Setting
Many of us are not satisfied with ourselves, with some particular features of our character or the results of our own deeds. Psychologists refer to such phenomenon as low self esteem. What’s the reason we don’t value ourselves? First thing to consider is that our self esteem is based on how other people perceive us. We are inclined to base our self esteem on other people’s opinions. This is true especially on children.
First of all, how other people perceive us is what our self esteem depends on. On other people’s opinions is where we are inclined to base our self esteem on. It is especially typical of children. Little children are not able to analyze their activity and their confidence depends on adults’ estimation of their behavior. Besides during all our lives we always compare the image of our ideal “ego “with our real “ego”. And if our real “I “is too far form the ideal our self esteem suffers from it. As our ideal image may be too perfect and unreal, it would mean that there are no reasons for that in most cases.
People with low self esteem do not hope for success in their activities and they are more likely to act, just trying to escape from our failures. And even when they attain positive results, they attribute their small victories to external factors (the task was too easy; it was just luck). Also growing dramatically is the feeling of discontent with themselves. People cannot achieve success, because they are dissatisfied with themselves and on the other hand, they are dissatisfied with themselves because they have never managed to succeed which means that it is a kind of vicious cycle. Try to keep in mind that you will achieve what you intend to do and that every success starts with your self confidence.
To improve your self confidence here is an efficient exercise you can do. Making a list of positive features of your character is what you can do and be sure that it’s no less than forty. It’s likely that this won’t be easy. However, you may write when you wish to and you are not limited for time. You are to enrich it with new strong points of your nature every day once that the list is completed.
Here is an efficient exercise you can do in order to improve your self confidence. You are expected to make a list of positive features of your character (not less than forty). This could be quite difficult. But you are not limited for time and you may write when you wish to. Once the list is completed, you are to enrich it with new strong points of your nature every day. You will soon see that such a person as described in the list is someone you will definitely like and surely deserves respect.
Turn to Father and Son when you need window repair Philadelphia PA.
For more information...
Time Management
Filed under Motivation · Tagged with Goal Setting, happiness, innovation, inspiration, Leadership, Motivation, personal development, self help, Self Help Advice, Self Help Tips, self improvement, self improvement and motivation, stress management, Time Management
