Every January - without fail - new clients come to me and complain about
disappointment. It’s not surprising: as a new year begins,
people have high expectations “Hey, it’s a new year, I’m gonna change my
life”. But, by the middle of January, they feel bummed out and
majorly disappointed. I hear clients say: “I thought it was gonna
be so great, but it’s the same old shit as last year.” Most of us
can only sustain New Year’s Resolutions for about three days max.
After that, we fall back into the same old patterns. What’s the
big surprise? We’ve had years to develop these patterns, we expect
in three days we can undo the cumulative damage of decades?
New
Year’s Resolutions rarely work; nothing “magically” changes just because
it’s a new year. If we want things to change, we need to take
action and create the change by behaving and thinking differently.
This is hard work! As we head into the end of January, let’s
revisit your New Year’s resolutions and see what obstacles are in your
way. Here are four that may be familiar:
You
aren’t willing to do the work
If you
just wait for happiness (more money, a new lover, a better job) to come
to you, what do you think will happen? Likely, nothing! New
results require new thoughts, actions, speech, and intentions.
Before giving up on your resolutions (tempting, isn’t it?) instead look
past the obvious and dig deeper. For example: if you want a
boyfriend, what for? If it’s to stop feeling lonely, then a
boyfriend may not fix your problem. Your loneliness is the real
problem. If you think you need a new job, what for? Do you
want to leave your current job because you find some of the people
difficult? Guess what? There are usually difficult people at
every job. Rather than running away, set your intention to learn
how to deal with difficult people. See what I mean about digging
deeper? A recent client told me he wanted to look like Daniel
Craig (aka the new James Bond). I asked him why. He said,
“because then I’ll feel sexy and confident.” I suggested we work
on how he can feel that way WITHOUT looking like Agent 007. I
helped him identify and remove what blocked him from feeling sexy,
confident, strong and handsome.
You’re
too impatient
How
many of us feel impatient about change and don’t want to wait forever to
become happier? (In all honesty, I’d raise my hand to this too).
After all, we deserve to be happy, don’t we? Look at how long
we’re suffered already. This kind of logic may work for a TV
commercial (“because you’re worth it”) but it doesn’t work in real life.
If you’ve spent 25, 35 or 45 years feeling you’re not worthy of a good
job/man/house/whatever, do you really expect that a “new” year is going
to change that? When my clients want to take on big psychological
“makeovers”, I encourage them to take it slowly. We can’t sustain
major change when we try to do it dramatically and quickly. I know
it isn’t as exciting – it wouldn’t make good TV – but lasting change in
our lives comes gradually, step-by-step.
You
expect too much
When I
have a new client who says, “I have so many problems, I don’t know where
to start”, I encourage him or her to make a list of all the things that
bother them and to rate these problems (on a scale of 1 to 10) by how
much pain each one brings them. For example, “I hate my job” is a
7, “I feel so lonely” is a 9, “I don’t like my body” is a 3. We
start to work on the most painful stuff first and we focus on one
problem at a time, breaking it down into small, do-able action steps.
For example, saying “I hate my job” over-and-over is only going to bring
you misery. Instead, ask yourself questions like: “What about my
job bothers me the most? What do I like about it?” Any seemingly
unsolvable problem can be broken down into a series of “smaller”, more
easily solved problems.
You’re
too hard on yourself
It’s not too late to make a resolution for 2007. Try this one: be
kinder to yourself this year. This may sound counter-intuitive if
you want to change, but it isn’t. Most of us have beaten ourselves
up mentally for years; has this gotten us where we want to be?
That’s not the way to do it. As we progress into this new year,
make a list of 10 ways that you can be kinder to yourself in 2007
and start to do some of them. I guarantee you that by being kinder
to yourself, any changes you want to make in your life will happen
more quickly and painlessly
