New year’s resolutions
If you think New Year is going to magically give you the superpowers to start carrying out your goals then you would be wrong.
Are you one of those who dread New Year because of that sense of failure you feel, because you can never keep those new year’s resolutions.
Oliver Burkemana, psychologist offers some tips on how to make New Year’s resolutions that may last beyond that first week.
He says …
Don’t make New Year resolutions…
You could be setting yourself up for failure by making big changes. He says : “ Ambitious goals may provide a brief surge of motivation, but when that fades, you’ll end up feeling worse. Trying to
transform your life, all at once, is doomed to fail. Rather make small achievable goals that you can build on. Don’t say you want to run the Comrades marathon if you have never run. Rather set a
few smaller goals like running 5km and then ten kilometres.
Don’t wait to get motivated.
If you think New Year is going to magically give you the superpowers to start carrying out your goals then you would be wrong. Don’t wait for a specific time – rather decide on the goal and get
started. When you can’t find the requisite get up and go emotions, this just adds another hurdle between you and taking action. Recognition that you don’t have to feel like doing something, in
order to do it. You can accept the negative feelings for what they are, and act anyway.
Instead of positive thinking, see thoughts as ‘mental weather’.
Practice meditation. Meditation is in fashion, these days, as a way to combat stress. But in its original form, it’s more than a calming technique. The Buddha advised cultivating “non-attachment”
monitor your thoughts and remove judgement. Meditation can help you learn to see thoughts as “mental weather” — sometimes bad, sometimes good, but not part of “you”.
