Its New Years Day and around the country people are sharing their new years resolutions.

Are you one of them?

There is no law that says you need to make new years resolutions, yet there is something about the hope and opportunity that a new year brings that makes it  natural to think about the year ahead and what you want it to be like, or should that be how you want it to be different for the year just past.

Its probably no surprise that the number one resolution is to lose weight/ get fitter, particular after the recent period of festive indulgence over Christmas.  Its probably also not a surprise that 92% of new year resolutions fail within the the first 6 weeks.    When you look at statistics like that it makes you wonder why you would bother with resolutions …. i mean why deliberately set yourself up for failure.

What is it about resolutions that makes them so hard to stick to?  Well, most resolutions that are about what people feel they should do and not so much about what they want to do.  They always seem to be around soothing you want to give up,  drinking, eating crap… the list goes on.  And of course the other reason they are difficult to achieve is that people go cold turkey, they go all out to and try to do too much too soon.  Then they quickly feel overwhelmed and soon he cracks begin to appear.

At The Body Retreat we prefer to work towards a goal.  Setting yourself a positive goal, one that you really want to achieve that is based on what you do want not what you don’t want.  From that goal you when focus on the positive behaviours that each day take you one step closer to achieving your goal.

So first thing is to set the goal.  Is it a positive one?  Identify what positive behaviours you will need to adopt to move towards this goal.  Now write it down… did you know that you are 61% more likely to active a goal that is written down?   Now every day make a concuss choice to adopt one of your new positive behaviours, when that starts to feel comfortable or easy to maintain then add another.  Each small set you take will take you closer to your goal.

If you feel the Nw Year would be compete without at least one little resolution or two then why not resolve to spend more time with you family, wear gorgeous matching underwear every day, raise money for charity or treat yourself to some R&R every month.  These might seem frivolous resolutions but in their own way they will encourage other positive behaviours to support them… and who knows where that might lead you.

Have a happy and healthy 2014.