New Year, New You?

The arrival of a new year is often a time when we set ourselves goals and resolutions to kick-start a new healthy habit. Gym memberships spike and google searches for the latest diet fad sky-rocket as people everywhere harbour honest ambitions to make a positive change in their lives.

Nearly all of these people fail.

Research shows that almost 25% of New Year’s resolutions will be broken within the first week and the majority give up within one to six weeks of starting. And this cycle is repeated year after year after year. The reason we fail is not because we lack good intention or ambition – it is because we lack clarity.

Most people will wake up and hope that they have the motivation to go to the gym or to meditate. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret … more often than not, you won’t have that motivation!

Even if we don’t acknowledge it, most of us are simply hoping that we will be motivated to do the thing we say we want to do – and relying on this hope is what sets us up for failure.

What we actually need is clarity.

Clarity about what we are going to do.

Clarity about when we are going to do it.

And clarity about why we are doing it.

So today, if you want to start a healthy meditation practice, be very clear.

You might employ a strategy of 'Implementation Intention' statements: write out a sentence stating your intention to implement a specific behaviour at a specific time. The use of such simple statements have been shown to increase the likelihood of actually undertaking the behaviour by 3 times!

So, write your Implementation Intention for your meditation practice right now:

“I will meditate at 06:45 for 15 minutes before the kids wake up; if I miss this session I will do it at 20:00 before I watch Netflix…”

Take account of the realities of your life and make what you set yourself achievable!

Through-out this week, I want you to reflect on what not implementing this healthy new habit will cost you:

1. What will you lose if you don’t engage with this practice?

2. What important meaning can you assign to this practice, in terms of your own mental well-being and a reduction of unnecessary psychological suffering for yourself?

3. How might such a shift in you, positively impact your family and loved ones?