New Year's Determinations :: Emotional and Mental Health

> Emotional and Mental Health > Goal Setting and Motivation

New Year's Determinations
by author Mark Davies

The children’s nursery rhyme goes, “Wish I may, wish I might, get the wish, I wish tonight”. As adults we may smile at such a simplistic understanding of life. Yet every year, thousands of adults make wishes disguised as a New Year’s resolutions.

Research shows that fewer than 20 per cent of New Year’s resolutions are realized. Most are broken within two weeks, leaving us feeling depressed, stressed, and bad about ourselves. When we break a resolution, in effect we are lying to ourselves. If we do this often enough, we no longer trust ourselves.

While life-changing ideas such as losing weight, getting in shape, and quitting smoking are all great goals, when they are only wishes and vague resolutions, they are often doomed to failure.

What can we do to reach goals of change in our lives? We need to see our goals as the visionary part of a life-changing strategy. We need to look at what we want to achieve and recognize that the secret for success lies within us. We need to carefully scrutinize what motivates us and understand why we want a particular thing.

This New Year, if you are seeking a new beginning and a new life-changing goal, be honest with yourself. Look within and then follow these six critical steps to success.

Step 1. Know exactly what you want

1 2

Next Page >>>

Mark Davies, RPsych, is a registered psychologist who teaches full time at Care and Regent Colleges in Vancouver. He is a popular seminar speaker and operates the Rainbow Clinic, a small private practice in Surrey, BC.

Source: alive #255, January 2004

Launch Into January
Many people have mixed emotions about returning to a regular schedule after the holidays. It's common to feel a little down as January's cold weather and lack of sunlight, in addition to the change of routine, can make it hard to get motivated.

Focus Forward
Though sixty-one percent of adults make New Year's resolutions, very few-between five and 15 percent-actually see them through to completion. Why do so few of us actually stick to our resolutions?

Not in the Mood?
Something holds us back from exercising. The problem is not usually a lack of desire, but often the way we approach physical activity.

Creating Safe Places to Deal With Pain
Motivational speakers use anecdotes and humour to inspire people to reach their potential. Motivational teachers help people understand why they do what they do, often drawing to the surface hidden beliefs and painful feelings.

September Brings Opportunity for Change
As balmy breezes become crisp winds and the green leaves change colour with autumn, September brings a positively charged current of change. The longer, lazier days of summer are ending as structure and routine take over. Students settle into a busy new year. It's harvest time.

A Healthy Dose of Vanity
It wasn't skyrocketing blood pressure or the warning from his doctor to lose seventy pounds before his heart gave out that pushed David out of the fast-food line and onto the treadmill. Instead, it was a little white envelope that held an invitation to his high school reunion.

Living True to Your Values
You've seen them-people who smile from ear to ear and seem to exude inner peace. Do you know how they got that oh-so-good feeling? Chances are that they figured out what was really important to them and began living true to those values.

Look for Balance and Feel Balanced!
Research has catapulted emotional health to the forefront of wellness. The consensus now is that mental health is the new frontier for peak performance and quality of life, while stress and depression its nemesis.

Create the Holiday You'd Love to Have
Take two weeks in December to break yourroutine-travel, overeat, overdrink, under-exercise, and undersleep (with relatives inclose quarters)-and you have the potential for disaster. Oh yeah, add a NewYear's celebration in there, too.

When Resolutions Lack Resolve
Gosh, is it January already? I know you have some great ideas about what to do with this new beginning. Maybe you'll quit bad habits or vow to get into shape; or maybe you'll make this the year you get organized.

Taming the Food Tiger
Is your January resolution to lose weight a dim memory now? Don't despair. Here are six ways to change your relationship with food and help you shed weight and keep it off.

Four Ways to Commit to a New Habit
A habit is defined as a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behaviour that is acquired through frequent repetition. "We live mostly by habit, says Ann Graybiel, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences.

Listen to Your Inner Voice for Outer Health
Recent studies have shown that a great percentage of disease processes today are preventable through changes in lifestyle and diet. Well-being is directly connected to our self-image and self-esteem. Unfortunately, the move to become empowered over our health is not likely to happen until a healthy self-image has been realized. This can and will happen by committing to following your voice from within.

Celebrating Women
While sharing a ritual lunchtime with girlfriends, one friend commented about how inspired she was by her new 45-year-old female trainer at the gym. I mentioned my vivacious 51-year-old yoga instructor, and another friend chimed in with her 48-year-old female neighbour who still runs marathons.

Life Makeover
How do you set out to make yourself a priority? Whether it is eating healthier, exercising, or taking time just to be, you need to tap into what your spirit is yearning for.

Let's Talk Success
In order to achieve success, men can become outwardly aggressive in their drive for their goals and often this aggression leads to ill health-physical and mental. It is well documented that extreme emotional states such as aggression, anxiety, or depression negatively affect a man's health and can create myriad problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke.

Happiness Equals Success
Does success bring us happiness or is it the other way around? In this chicken or egg debate, we often hear that success hatches happiness. The research revealed that happy people are more successful in marriage and work and enjoy better mental and physical health.

Resolve to Evolve Within
What if this New Year, the resolutions you make are focused less on the external you and more on the essence of you? Self-empowerment and emotional health can become your new goal. A new year brings a chance for each of us to realize the power within us that is the truth of who we are.

Effective Goal Setting
Effective goal setting is not a process that begins January 1 and ends the same week. Implementing simple steps daily will start you on the road to discovering and achieving your goals. The more you focus on the details, the clearer your goal will become. Adding details like who, what, where, when, and how you'll achieve that goal will make it more specific and attainable.

The Biology of Winning
New findings in the field of neurobiology-the scientific study of the brain and nervous system-are shedding light on why some people are highly successful and talented and how the rest of us might learn to be that way, too.

The Anatomy of Spirit
Three years ago, I stepped away from my life-relationships, commitments, and responsibilities-to travel as a pilgrim. My only possessions rested in the rucksack on my back. I did this to search my soul for answers, heal past hurts, and move forward toward the future.

Learning, Growing, and Parallel Parking
Do you get that itchy, unsettled "spring fever feeling this time of year? It used to worry me, but now I know it's just a winter's worth of pent-up energy dying to come out.

Canada's Bold and Beautiful Singer-Songwriter
I am worried about interviewing Jann Arden-she's written and said so much to the public and press already. Will we be able to cover new ground?

Rick Hansen 20 Years Later
The man's got charisma. Rick Hansen, who turns 50 in August this year, rolls forward to speak into the microphone, sending the crowd into cheers. The crowd is as loud as any this Man in Motion heard at the peak of his round-the-world wheelchair tour 20 years ago.

From Confusion to Clarity
Stephen was considering what looked like a fairly straightforward decision-a move from the hustle and bustle of Vancouver to the quiet peace of a spectacular oceanside home on a nearby island. He felt quite clear about it until his adult daughter implied he was abandoning her. Instantly his peace of mind evaporated.

Sharing the Secret
My son and I watched a DVD called The Secret. It has popularized the law of attraction: by focusing on what you want, you can attract it into your life. From the look on my seven-year-old's face, I could tell he was making a list.

Embracing Change
Change. Most of us dislike contemplating the concept because it means giving up our comfort zone. Here is the good news: small changes over time lead to large results. Think of small steps working together in the same way as compound interest.

Living the Good Life
Golfing, sailing, travelling-what a life those 65-going-on-25-year-old retirees live in those television ads! For many of us, that day seems too distant to even contemplate. The earlier our planning begins, however, the better our chances of having financial security and freedom at retirement.

Take a Load Off: 5 Steps to Reducing Stress by Decluttering Debt
Clutter got you down? Well perk up! The New Year is the ideal time to clean out the previous year's accumulation of junk, dust, and debt. Holiday credit card bills, home renovation payments, start-of-the-year bills-these are the stuff that can make you toss and turn at night.

Choose a Smoke-free Lifestyle
Smoking kills. If you smoke, you need to stop. It's that simple. According to the Canadian Lung Association smoking directly kills about 45,000 Canadians each year-more than the total combined number of annual deaths from AIDS, car accidents, suicides, murders, fires, and accidental poisonings.

Losing Weight
The New Year kicks off with parties presenting irresistible desserts, delicious eggnog, and those tasty little appetizers that are so hard to refuse! With the alcohol flowing and office or family gatherings happening all around you, temptation is at an all-time high.

Addiction Prescription
You're determined (this time) to lose that weight, quit smoking or ... You have the plan, the courage, the discipline, and the commitment. You have the gidgets and the gadgets. Why is it still an overwhelming challenge?

New Year's Workout
Change is one of those words that often evokes powerful emotions, both scary and exciting, all at once. Change can mean different things to different people, but come New Year's, the number-one change that most people try to implement in their lives is better health and fitness.