Two Important Mental Tips To Help You Fulfill Your Dreams
January 24th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Over the leading two articles in this series discussing clear-cut information you could exploit to help out with your 2008 goals, we examined health and diet techniques in that order. In today’s post, we will consider some basic psychological rules you can use to support still more in those two areas of your life, but also to offer support in alternative resolutions you may well have committed yourself to.
The main rule, which even without the others can make an extraordinary improvement, is the idea of “failure doesn’t exist”. Truly, that is a weird one to make sense of, but think about this: let’s pretend your resolution for New Year was to avoid every type of fast food restaurants for a full year, and all of a sudden, after a lovely day out with friends, dying for something to eat, you discover that you’ve gone onto autopilot and you are already sat at a table with your favourite fast food. This does not indicate that you’ve smashed your new resolution, even if it’s barely a few weeks into the year. It categorically DOES signify that you have a chance to understand something important. Perhaps you’ll have to be especially watchful when you’re out with friends again. Perhaps it’s to say to your friends all about the decision and seeing if they can be there for you - or give you a hard time if you go into a Burger bar. Perhaps it’s to keep away from those friends ever again!
The next suggestion is that you never, ever do something deficient. Or at the bare minimum, every single activity we act out has - or had in the beginning - a constructive intention. I don’t trust the belief that we begin a new habit without it also having a good intention - to better our life or the lives of people around us one way or another. The issue is that from time to time our lives change, but we carry on performing that behaviour, and it then develops into a thing we see as a problem. Or perhaps we enrich one segment of our life, but unintentionally harm some other.
This is imperative : you should come to terms with the fact that EVERY ACTION you execute has a is objective. Having a smoke turned you into a Han Solo-like rogue whilst at school. Fast-food helped you get over that adolescent break-up. Drink helps you relax in tense situations. Those advantages were definitely present when you began the behaviour originally, even if they are no longer relevant. But even if that specific state of affairs is no longer around (for sure, you are done with that adolescent break-up now that you are in your fourties?) the original gain could be (a vast wedge of cheesecake still makes you feel better).
So on no account beat yourself up if your former habits re-surface - this simply shows that at the time you interrupted the earlier behaviour, you also prevented yourself having that valuable side-effect. It’s best to sit peacefully for a few minutes, try to figure out what the benefit is, and investigate alternative ways - numerous ways, to provide the maximum flexibility - to acquire that original gain. And then try breaking off from the unwanted behaviour for a second time. If you find enough ways to acquire the same benefit, you’ll almost unconsciously finish performing the previous behaviour, given that you will no longer need to do it.
While these ideas might appear a tad bizarre, you will notice that when you make an effort to go along with them, your life will be somewhat simpler, a bit more stress-free. Both of these key concepts support you to stick with your new year resolutions, and to recoup should you mess up. Try abiding by them for a few weeks and become aware of how much simpler life can be.
Tags: mental
