Simply Abundant Living

Keep Your Resolutions This Year – Part 4

Once you have successfully made it through the initial phases of behavior change and you’ve experienced some success with new, healthier behavior it is natural to begin to feel some well-deserved confidence! You’ve made it through the hardest part, right? Certainly you will be able to continue with your new behaviors and outlook!

It’s important to never fully let your guard down, however. Be ever vigilant so that you can avoid temptations. Reward yourself when you successfully avoid temptations and relapses and try to replace old negative habits with new positive habits.

If you do trip-up, however…don’t be too hard on yourself…and above all:

NEVER GIVE UP!

Instead, look on any mistakes as just minor setbacks. Relapses are common and they are actually an important part of the process of accomplishing lifelong changes.

Common feelings associated with relapses are failure, frustration, and disappointment. Don’t allow any setbacks to take away from your self-confidence.

A good thing to do after a relapse is to look very carefully at why the relapse occurred. Can you pinpoint what triggered it? If you can pinpoint a trigger, you may be able to avoid future relapses that are similar in nature.

Yes…relapses are not fun. The only thing to do, though, is pick yourself back up, dust off the dirt, and get back to work. If necessary, start again with the preparation, action, and maintenance stages. Reaffirm your motivation, your plan of action, and your commitment to making these changes. Then make plans for dealing with future temptations.

Like I said before, most resolutions fail because proper preparation and actions were not performed. When you approach change with a solid understanding of how to prepare, implement and maintain a new behavior, you have an EXCELLENT chance for lasting success!

Happy 2009 – and may all of your resolutions be permanent changes!

Technorati Tags: lifelong changes, new behavior, resolutions

Keep Your Resolutions This Year!

You start off with the best of intentions when the year is  new.  A brand new year full of promise and opportunity and the possibilities seem endless and expansive!  The skies the limit and you are going to do great things!  Sound familiar?  I know…me too!  Then the momentum wanes and you start to slip a little here and there and before you know it not much has been done to make those resolutions happen permanently.

Well…the bottom line is that changing behaviors is not really as simple as just deciding you are going to do something or even announcing it.  There is a substantial commitment of time, effort, and emotion involved in making changes like this.  Whatever the goal, making it happen will be a little different for everyone.  Try to find out what works for you and then go with it.  This trial-and-error process (where you are trying to figure out how to make these changes permanent) is where people typically get frustrated and end up quitting!

Don’t do this!  If something isn’t working for you, reassess and try something different!

This is the time that you need to be looking for the techniques that work for you and finding the ways to keep yourself motivated.

One thing that may be helpful for anyone trying to incorporate behavior changes in their life is to understand the “Stages of Change”  that researchers have found that helps explain how people react to change.  Basically, this model explains that change is not easy and often making smaller changes toward a larger goal is a better way to succeed.

The Elements of Change:

• Readiness for change:  Are you prepared with the resources and knowledge to successfully make a permanent  change?
• Barriers to change:  Is there anything that might prevent you from changing?
• Expect relapse:  Consider what might trigger a return to a former behavior.

Remember, change is most often successful when it occurs gradually and also know that relapses are an inevitable part of the process of change. People are often resistant to change at first but with time they will develop a committed approach to changing a behavior.

Next time: How to prepare yourself to successfully make a change in your life!

Technorati Tags: changing a behavior, resolutions, Stages of Change