AMA Thread - Broken New Year's Resolutions clinic (ENDED)

Of course @pluckyBirch8058. Thank you for reminding me how completely necessary it is to build and maintain such important goals as this. These are very worthy goals and i wold totally encourage you to set them as clearly defined and detailed goals.

They might be long term goals so it would be a good idea to establish lots of little mini goals that support the big one. mini goals might be things like looking after the basics of diet, exericse, relationships, things you occupy your time with. Educating yourself more on how to manage your thoughts and behaviours better by maybe joining CBT groups, meditation, mindfulness and or yoga classes. Talking to your doctor about suitable medications. Talking to friends and family. Volunteering your time so that a sense of worthiness is felt.

Achieving these kind of goals are very incremental, you have to apply yourself to the action and tick things off as you go. Building your support netwrok around you so you have people who can remind you to keep talking, keep appointments, wil take you places. Finding a creative self expression, engaging in things that hold a purpose for you. Finding religion, god, spirtuality, science, philosphy, poetry, meta physics. We may not hold all the answers but theres some pretty inspiring stuff out there. Taking things slowly and realistically. Having a plan B if something goes wrong. And if you have been suicidal in the past perhaps even creating a crisis plan for when things are very bleak.

The main thing is to not give up. So much can be learnt of great value and enjoyment along the way to achieving this kind of goal.

Hi @AffyAvo.

I think i was referring to sick bed resolutions as ones borne out of frustrations and desperation. They may not be the most realistic at times but can definately be fuelled with motivation. However i do get that some people are actually sick and often bedbound and so a sick bed resolution might actually be focused around how they can improve the qaulity of their lives. Pain management and physical constraints can be things to be mindful of here.

If this refers to you and your situation then i would suggest making your goals around the time scales and available energy that you have. For the sick the windows of opprotunity to act can be pretty small so orgainsational skills need to be on point.

Also, the sick tend to be more isolated than others even if it is isolation to one room in the house. Making sure people are around or you have people to communicate with is vital.

So, in terms of what your specific goals might be make sure that they are within your available physical and energy realms. Exercise goals are obviously important and so goals around bed exericses, walking around, getting in and out of the house etc.. Making sure the basics are in place such as heating, food and company. Keeping your mind active. Finding things that have meaning to you.

Depending on what the bleakness you anticiapte is you might want to create contingency plans or goals for when things go wrong. A crisis plan. Or worst case scenario plan.

Everyone is essentially looking to improve the qulaity of their own lives and all of our goals will be in some way directed towards this. Yours are relative to you and just as important to achieve. YOu can still be a functioning, competant and vital part of your own life as well as that of your community and the world.

ooh I like this goal @admaiorasemper

How to be more extravert? Well firstly, we both understand what extraversion means but what you need to establish is what it means to you. Identify it in terms of practicality. What is it you would like to do with more extraversion. What is it you wouldnt like to do with it. Do you want to be extravert enough to stand up in the pub and sing a song as i accompany you badly on the mandolin or are you wanting to teach, act, be a leader. Or simply to go about your day without feeling self conscious and afraid to speak your mind?

So, if you can understadn in great detail what it is you are asking for yourself to be then you can start work on why it would mean so much to you to achieve this. What will you get out of it, how will it make you feel, why will it change your life for the better etc....

And once thats all done then you can start on the business of creating the 'Hows'. How do you get to your goal. This may involve breaking the big goal down in to mini goals. For example is you were wanting to simply be more extravert you might want to havea mini goals of developing your public speaking skills by joing one of those public speaking clubs that i keep seeing on the internet and in local press. To further breakdown how you might achieve that mini goal of improving public speaking you might want to include things like, find a club, arrange to go, panic, let them know that you are anxious, maybe find someone to go with. Mediate on it, practice relaxation exercises.

I hope that helps. Its a worthy goals but make it very specific to you.

@InfiniteThoughts2k19

These are great questions and I am super glad that youve raised the 21 days to form a habit myth.

21 days is in common knowledge because it was observed by a surgeon , Dr Maltz, in the 1950, that his patients took at least 21 days to get used to the surgery he had performed on them, this was anything from leg amputation to nose surgery. He also observed in himself that it took him at lease 21 days to get used to changes he implemented in his life. He wrote a book about it which became a best seller and so it passed in to common knowledge where it could be simplified and misquoted forever more. He found that it took at least 21 days for a thing to have an automatic response. This has been wrongfully quoted as 21 days to form a habit.

Dr Maltz book, as well meaning as it was, was not a scientific study and more a collection of useful anecdotes. A credible study on habit forming was conducted by a Dr Lally (I think) where she found that her subjects took from 8 days to 250 days to automate a new practice. The average i think was 66 days. This is less impressive than 21 days but it is what it is. We can always work better with truths rather than pin our hopes on ideas.

The thing i take from this which i find most relevant is that bringing about healthier habits is all about being mindful about them daily. Progress is about deliberately engaging in our activities and making the right choices. Whether it takes you 8 or 250 days (or even 21 days) it would be doing yourself a disservice to disengage from your efforts just because its taking longer or is harder than one thought. If its worth it to you its worth it to you to do and to keep doing. It will eventually become second nature whereupon your awareness might be given over to another important focus.

Oh yes and i think Dr Lallys study (still not sure that her name) showed that it made no difference to the continuation of a habit if it was not practiced once or twice or for a short period of time.

I hope that helped clear the 21 day myth up and give you something more real to work with. In terms of what you can do to maintain health habits the biggest tips i can give is remain interested in why its important to you. Motivation comes from why, from meaning. It gives you the purpose behind why you are waking up at 6am to study or to meditate or to run. So, explore to great depths why something is important for you to achieve. Conceive as already being done…how will you feel, what will you see differently, hear differently, touch differently. How will people view you, behave around you. How will you carry yourself. What will you have in life. Its really just a process of letting your imagination build a picture of how life will be for you once you achieve your goal. And checking in with that everyday so its as fresh and as meaningful as ever.

I think this ties in with question 2.

Question 3 is brilliant and such great observation. It is true some people do get things done a lot quicker than others. They seem to power through work and challenges to be competent and productive people. And more power to them. But ha! i feel your pain. This doesnt come easy to us all. Some people possess a higher level of conscientiousness and thats just how it is. We have to deal with that without throwing everything to the ground saying whats the point. The point is you can only work with you. You can be inspired by what others achieve and you can know that if a thing is humanly possibly consider it within your reach as Marcus Aurelius said. However reality bites and you are the thing by which you measure yourself and you can only ever compare yourself to who you were yesterday rather than to who someone else is today to quote Jordan Peterson. Its important to use your imagination to inspire you and not to use it to become jealous and destructive. Self control, consistency and perseverance are all things that are dished out to us in unequal measure however we all have the skill to improve on the measure that we have. Be present, engage in deliberate action every day and keep your vision purpose clear.

Question 4. I think we need to be able to be flexible. It isnt necessary to rigidly follow a strict path everyday unless of course what you are doing is really dangerous for you. Festivities are fun, have a drink, join in, eat cake. Youll get more from the joining in with the spirit of things than you will from the painful restraint. However over indulgence is the test here. WE all can find ourselves overindulging and running with the bulls at Pamplona only to suffer for it later on. So, vigilance is alway needed.

Then there are those daily temptations that we see as rewards fro being good. Maybe youve gone to the gym and think that having a dream bun is a reward. Its kind of a skewed thinking that doesnt remove the unwanted object from the routine in fact it only serves to objectify it and make it all the more precious. Create rewards that are new and meaningful. Delayed gratification might be needed here. Knowing that you reward will come when you have lost a stone or can run up stairs, or can feel more alert and have more stamina.

Question 5: Procrastination. Just decide. Its doesnt matter if its not a perfect decision. If your goals are mini goals that are getting you to the bigger goals then so what if you cant decide how to go about achieving something today, or what choice to take on a thing. Sometimes its enough to just point your boat in the right direction and just row. Starting gets you moving and you can recalibrate and refine as you go. You can also practice removing procrastination by doing very small things. Seemingly inconsequential things or things that you already routinely do but doing them with full awareness and deliberateness. This will help you build up a pattern of success. A pattern of understanding that your choices make stuff happen. Thats important to know when dealing with procrastination as fear can hold you back.

Questions 6: How to deal with failure? Well to my mind the only way to fail is to not try in the first place. I would rather you set yourself a good goal and achieve it imperfectly rather than not achieve it all all because you didnt try. I like new years resolutions because they bring us in to that direct relationship with ourselves again and people putting direction and meaning back in to our lives. But of course we do have a tradition of failing the new years resolutions and leaving it there for another year. However the greatest thing to take from new years resolutions is that there is nothing standing in our way to make a February the 13th resolution, or a 2pm resolution. Failure only comes when we no longer see the purpose behind what we are doing and stop. This can happen all to often. And we need to maintain a rapport with ourselves so we are constantly renewing and refreshing our motivations. Others practicalities like getting other people involved helps too. Writing progress down, celebrating achievements and keeping a journal are good ways to chart the progress.

As long was you know that you dont have to stop trying and that every day offers you a new opportunity to start again, pick up what youve stopped doing again or stop and refocus then you will get somewhere. This is a life long journey.

g

Ok so a good daily study plan is necessary @DreamChaser31 your school can better advise on that. But i would say more than that first let all those who need to know what your goals are and that you need help. That could mean calling your dream college and letting them know of your dream and getting their help and support if they offer it and i could mean letting your friend and family know whats expected of them. Access all the supports that are currently available to you in your school. That might be study groups, extra lessons, extra curricular activites. Anything that fixes you in to the routine of study and learning. It may be that there is a hard truth for you to learn here and It may be that you do not achieve your goal this year. This might be a realty that you will have to face. This is however not a failure. It is information. All too often we can be derailed from our big goals because we cant accept information or we read it as failure. If you are serious about heading for your dream college then you will understand already what it would mean for you to get there. How it will cahnge your life for the better.

If time is short you may need to totally immerse yourself in studying. But you have to keep one eye on your wellbeing too. Its important to love what you do. Its not necessary but with a passion for your subjects you can learn a lot more than if you are clock watching all the time and feeling like its all too much of a chore.

Sometimes it can be the beginning of something that holds the greatest pleasure @FaithfulPrune9638. Maintaining it can seem like a chore and we really can struggle with things as soon as we see them as a chore.

With your soda drinking goal perhaps you could start by understanding why it is so important to you to stop drinking soda. It may be that your concerns are less around drinking soda and more about improving your overall fitness of looks. Soda drinking may just be a mini goals towards achieving a bigger goal. If it is part of a bigger goal you might want to properly understand what that bigger goal is and why its so important to you to achieve. Understanding the whys of the bigger goal might help you to understand better how this smaller goal fits in.

You might also be struggling with a sense of failure. 'If i cant even achieve this relatively small thing of giving up soda then what chance do i have of achieving my bigger goals.' I think this kind of thinking often goes on in the back ground and it can really put the breaks on well intentioned resolutions.

So, what to do....

Dont give up for one thing. Just because you start your resolution on the 1st January and was doing well until the 3rd when you found yourself pleasure/panic guzzling a littre of coke in a whim doesnt mean that the journey is over. There will be times like this. Breaking your no soda drinking goal down in to smaller chunks and setting some conditions aorund them might help you to stay on track. For example. Allow your self one soda a day or half a soda a day or one every two days etc... But when you are drinking it remain conscious, enjoy it, be in rapport with your actions after all it is your choice to do this up until you make another choice to not do it. Say to your self 'To show restraint here i am only going to drink half a glass of soda because thats my choice.' Tomorrow maybe whilst drinking interupt that process with the decision to not finsh all that you have allowed your self to have and pour the rest away. Be in control and be ok with it. If you find yourself in a situation where on the spur of the moment or by impulse you drink more than you had reolved not to, dont worry, tomorrow is another day where you can begin again. All your good work will not be in vein if you pick up your resolution again tomorrow. Ask yourself why you gave in to impulse and see what you can do about finding a solution to overcoming that obstacle next time.

Be purposful in all that you do but dont allow yourself to become so rigid that you end up breaking and feeling like a failure. Flexibility and perseverence is key here.

Hello @helloAvocado4070

You are clearly going through a very tough time and i am sorry that you are having to expereince this. Unfortunately youve hit upon an AMA about Broken New Years Resolutions. It wouldnt be appropriate for us to discuss whats going on for you here but dont worry you can be helped we just need to point you in the right direction to find that. I dont know if you have a therapist on 7 cups that can help or a listener but there are a good few forums in the cummunity section that should be able to more adequately help you.

@hope i wonder if you could point @helloavocado4070 to the right support forums.

Goodluck, i hope that you can find the help you need.

g

Hello @helloAvocado4070

You are clearly going through a very tough time and i am sorry that you are having to expereince this. Unfortunately youve hit upon an AMA about Broken New Years Resolutions. It wouldnt be appropriate for us to discuss whats going on for you here but dont worry you can be helped we just need to point you in the right direction to find that. I dont know if you have a therapist on 7 cups that can help or a listener but there are a good few forums in the cummunity section that should be able to more adequately help you.

@hope i wonder if you could point @helloavocado4070 to the right support forums.

Goodluck, i hope that you can find the help you need.

g

@GrahamBarroneICHP

Thank you, Graham, for such a wonderful AMA!! I am absolutely loving the energy in this thread. So happy that we could make this happen. Thank you to everyone who has participated! The AMA is now closed.