New years Resolutions have you met your or have you relapsed?

We are living in dangerous times but at the beginning of the year, we were looking forward to a new and bright future. Many of us made new years resolutions to help us plan for a better year or a better us. With all of the uncertainty around us maybe it is time to try to focus and get back to some semblance of normalcy. Time to look at your new year's resolutions.

The fact is that almost everyone who started off 2020 with strong goals has by now given up. The fact is that we all relapse and can fall back into old habits. Here are some ideas on how to get back on track

Remember we all relapse, but it is not done all at once, it could be the result of a drawn-out process. For me it happened when I travelled to Australia over Xmas, I slowed down by reducing my daily exercise routine to once every two days, then three days, then once a week. I fell out of exercise slowly and then stopped. No excuses. There are many reasons why you may slow down on trying to achieve whatever goals you have. These could be the Coronavirus, or other Illnesses, vacation, holidays, changes at work or any other change in your schedule are all things that’ll get you off the wagon. 

There comes a point after you stop working toward your goals that you simply throw your hands up in the air and give in. It may be a dramatic moment or it could be a decision that the goal is not worth pursuing and over time you convince yourself that you cannot achieve it anyway.

Surrender is the most destructive part of the cycle. You remove all expectations from yourself and as a result, you plummet into an unhealthy stream of thought. The progress that you’ve made toward your goals is lost and you lose faith in yourself.

Inevitably there comes the moment when you hit bottom. This is a sobering moment when you see what you’ve allowed yourself to become, and you don’t like it one bit. Negative, defeated thoughts run through your mind. While hitting the bottom is never a fun experience, it is a necessary one. The pain of your failure, must become great enough for you to turn it around and take the control back.

Now comes the good part. When you hit bottom you were out of control, now you’re ready to once again grab the reigns. You’re ready to put yourself back onto your priority list. Now is the time to set specific goals for yourself that are realistic and within a set timeframe. Now get to work, reclaim your self-esteem, your freedom and your life.

  

Remember, life will always give you an excuse to stop working towards your goals – it’s up to you to fight back for what you truly want.

New Year's Resolutions: How to deal with Failure

Failure is something that can really be hard, it can affect a person and their outlook.  There are some that may have a hard time dealing with the failure that is in their life.  You need to consider the fact that failure is something that many people have to experience in their lifetime.  Failure is something that can be overcome if you have the right tools.

Do not get discouraged when you find that you fail at something.  It is going to be a learning experience and something that you need to take in stride.  You should think about the one thing that you are good at and remember it when you do end up failing at something.  Look at it as part of life and how you can learn from it all.  Making an effort at working hard to deal with failure is what you need to do.

You need to start thinking about the things that you are good at and that make you happy. Once you think about them and know what you need to do in order to achieve this type of success you will be on your way to making yourself feel better.  Having a good work ethic and positive thoughts will help you deal with any type of failure that you may have in your life.  

You need to build up a resistance to failure in your life. When you are feeling bad and you notice that you are failing you should keep your head up high and know that you are good at other things and that we all have our ups and downs.  It is something that is part of the lie and you should learn how to keep moving past it all.  

When failure is in your future you should use this time to channel out the negative energy and put into your positive future.  When you go through something bad you need to use what you have learned and make it good.  Having the feeling of accomplishment will make you feel better and give you the self-confidence that you are looking for.  The worst thing that you can do is be depressed about any type of failure that goes on in your life.  This will only bring you down and make you more upset about what is going on.  You should always look on the bright side of things.  

Keep the negative thoughts out of your head and do not dwell on them.  You need to rise up to the occasion and keep positive about life.  You are good at certain things and there is a reason why you should do what you have to in order to a great lead in life.  Failure comes with the good points and the bad ones and it is all apart of how you look at it all.  

Never judge who you are and always learn from the mistakes that you make.  There is only something good to come from it all and you can deal with failure as it comes.  Taking each moment into consideration and using all the skills that you have learned over the years to completely get over it and make life as you need. There are endless ways to end your worries about failure and after you figure them all out you will be ready for all the new challenges life brings.  

Fear of Personal Transformation

It has been 30 days since New Years and you may have made some resolutions about this upcoming year. Some of those resolutions may require some changes to be made. Many people feel insecure when they hear the thought of making changes. Change has triggered the emotional mind of many people over the years. The triggers have often hindered many people from transforming their personal characteristics to build self-esteem. Change is merely our ability to modify our ways in order to make constructive changes. We can use a variety of techniques in order to transform our personal characteristics. Change is adjustments that help us to improve our lives. 

We amend patterns, behaviors, habits and thinking by transforming our ways. Ultimately, we can revolutionize our self, which leads one to success. The fear of change then is often an illusionary state of mind. Many people fail to challenge their fears, which encumbers, making it difficult to get through the day. Making positive transformations is rewarding since it builds self-esteem and strength of character. We can use visualizations to make constructive transformations. 

Start with visualizing yourself. Focus on the negative and positive. Are you a negative thinker, or a positive thinker? If you are negative, you need to work harder at building your self-esteem and confidence. It will empower you to make personal transformations that lead you to success. 

Positive change occurs by sticking with your plan while working to achieve your goals. For instance, if your resolution was to lose weight, then you must stick with an exercise routine and diet. Because many people fear change, the new age solutions are promoted to help people with making a personal transformation to better their lives. Change is the development of adjusting to something new. When one transforms his or her behaviors, habits and thinking to productive patterns, it brings them greater rewards. 

When you get stuck in unchanged patterns, it prevents you from achieving success. We must face our fears directly to make productive changes that guide us to building our strength of character and self-esteem.  

People with low self-esteem are often afraid to transform, which is obviously linked to the fear of accepting difference. What this means is that we must accept differences, by retraining the mind so that it accepts change. Thus, we must move to acceptance in order to move ahead in our progression to transform our way of life. 

To transforms, making constructive changes, one must assess yourself. Self-analysis is simply the ability to evaluate yourself. Often when one goes through this analysis, they find problems that they did not know existed. For instance, perhaps when you did some self-analysis you discovered that you were afraid to be alone. This is a common fear amongst many people, yet many do not realize that this fear is embedded in the subliminal and unconscious mind. By self-analyzing, one can discover his or her fears and work to eliminate the problem. 

When you self-analyzes often you can make positive transformations while building self-esteem by expressing your feelings and thoughts. You can accordingly admit to things to yourself while recognizing your qualities and the way that you behaves. Throughout the process, you will become closer to the self, which builds self-esteem. By becoming closer to self, you can start frequently mentioning your personal achievements to build a stronger strength of character. You will find satisfaction within the self, by analyzing yourself often. 

Self-analysis makes it possible to discover the feelings that make you feel uncomfortable. Most times people fail to examine their uncomfortable feelings, which is part of the problem that makes it difficult for people to make a positive transformation. 

Write it down

Christmas has come and gone, the depth of winter is soon going to be upon us. Our homes are slowly starting to come back to normal. To help us through the upcoming darkness of winter, and to celebrate the new year, we turn to making commitments for change. Making commitments verbally is fine, but the best advice if you want to fulfill the commitment to yourself is to

Write it down.

Write it down,

Write it down.

Saying thank you works wonders

Its mothers day and I thought this post would be appropriate. I lost my mother when I was in my early 30's and was not able to say thank you to her for her wisdom, courage and hard work that helped shape the person I was and would continue to grow into being. She left a personal diary, which I read, and which allowed me a glimpse into the wonderful person she was when she was young and the hardships she and my father went through until the mid 50's. So for those of you lucky enough to have your mothers in your lives say thank you. Gratitude works to help your soul, feelings of gratitude enhance well-being and one’s one's sense of meaning. This  post is based on the ideas of Martin Seligman

Seligman suggests that you think of a person in your life who has kind or generous to you but whom you've never properly thanked. You write a detailed "gratitude letter" to that person, examining in concrete terms why you're grateful. Then you visit that person and read the letter aloud. According to Seligman, the ritual is powerful. "Everyone cries when you do a gratitude visit. It's moving for both people."

Pass it forward, or one good deed begets another is an ancient idea and is based on our need to be needed and to say thank you to those who have helped us out over the years. When I was teaching grade 10's I would have them do an autobiography and to help them organize the work, I would have them write about elementary school. In almost every essay I read students talked about the impact a teacher, a friend, an adult made in their lives. I would ask have you taken the time to say thank you to that person. Most students had not, in fact many of us do not practice this courtesy. When I was young my mom would tell me, as I told my children (as I suspect many of us boomers did) "Please and Thank you are magic little words, use them and you may get what you need" As we grew older but not much wiser, many of us forgot the magic little words or forgot how to use them wisely and with meaning. Today on the radio, I heard a lady who had a show about aging gracefully talk about birthdays and how she now celebrates not a birthday but uses the day as a celebration of a major milestone for the year, she said :I have had a European Vacation day, I had a Roman Holiday adventure day". She went on to talk about using your birthday to celebrate major milestones that you did in the year, or hope to do in the following year.

Another variation on moving your birthday from growing older is to create the birthday gratitude list. . The birthday gratitude list is simple. On your birthday, make a list of the things for which you grateful-with the number of items equalling the number of years you're turning that day. (So as a 64 year old this year I will be creating a list of 64 things I am grateful for this year). As your list grows by one each year-the theory being that the older you get, more you have to be thankful for and if you keep your list, it gets easier to fill out as you only have to add one item. :-) The tough job is to create the original list

Gratitude should be something we build into our lives and one way to do this is to try this just for one day, then the next day try it for just one day. Keeping resolutions is difficult, but we can all try something just for one day,  Build a way to be thankful into your daily routine (try this for just one day). Tomorrow, at a certain time think of one thing for which you're grateful and write it down.  I also suggest that you not only think about the one thing you are grateful for but take a few minutes and explore the deeper meaning behind why you are grateful.  (try it for just one day and then the next day try it again but only for one day :-)

Doing these little gratitude exercises, I think, can help you restore your sense of balance and your sense that for all the bad things that happen to us, good things do happen to us. Over time and little by little a new sense of seeing the world can grow.