The practice of making a New Year’s resolution is even older than the practice of celebrating the holiday on January 1st. 4000 years ago the ancient Babylonians marked the beginning of their new year (celebrated around the Spring Equinox) by vowing to the Gods to repay their debts, return things they had borrowed, and remain loyal to the king. Julius Caesar changed the date of the celebration, but kept the practice of pledging good conduct and making sacrifices to the Gods when the calendar turned over. Early Christians kept the practice alive, commemorating the occasion by reflecting on past mistakes and pledging to do better. We wouldn’t have named our treatment center Tabula Rasa Retreat if we didn’t believe whole-heartedly in the power of a clean slate, and we’d encourage everyone to take advantage of this golden opportunity for a fresh start.
Easy To Say, Hard To Do
While the practice of making a resolution is common, following through successfully is rare. Depending on where you get your statistics, rates of success are reported as ranging between 8% and 45%. If you’ve been dealing with addiction, you probably already know how hard it is to change habits ingrained over years or decades, and reinforced by neurological changes that occur in the way your brain responds to stress and stimulation. But let’s take a look at some tools you can use to create positive change that lasts throughout the coming years.
Set Specific Goals And Define How To Achieve Them
Part of the problem with resolutions is that our goals are often quite vague: common ones include “get organized”, “lose weight,” “exercise more,” “read more,” and “save more money.” If you’re looking to create significant change in your life, you’d do well to consider each step of the process and each action you’ll take to achieve the desired outcome before you start. Knowing exactly what you’re committing to can make it easier to see the pathway to success.
As you begin, focus on the process of improving yourself, rather than the end result. In mindfulness practice when you notice your mind is wandering, you re-focus your attention on breathing. A few minutes pass and you notice your focus has drifted again. This isn’t failure: the fact that you notice exactly what your mind is doing is in fact the entire purpose of the exercise. The same is true of achieving your resolution.
When you notice you’ve fallen short of goals, be kind to yourself, refocus your efforts, and try again. Remember that change isn’t the single ending point of attaining the goal, but “the infinite present moments in which transformation will occur.” Breaking the habits of a lifetime definitely won’t be easy, and getting right back to it after a slip is a sign of success, not failure. Remember, if your goal was to lose 10 pounds, losing 8 pounds isn’t a failure. Going a month without drinking was still a huge success for your general health and showed you that you can live without alcohol. If you’ve made yourself healthier by your efforts, and you have a lifetime to achieve your ultimate goal!
Set SMART Goals
SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-sensitive. Specific goals will allow you to focus on what’s actually important: “spend 30 minutes meditating every morning” is a better goal than “be mindful” because you know exactly what you can do to achieve it. Measurable means that you set goals you can track, which will give you a sense of accomplishment as you work towards a new you, while also letting you know when you’re falling short. Attainability is important because setting a pie in the sky goal like “stop getting angry” will lead to failure and frustration (whereas “deal with my anger in a healthy way” allows you to succeed). Relevant means aligning your commitment to change to your actual emotional and physical wants and needs. If you’re struggling with addiction, becoming fluent in Spanish probably shouldn’t be your #1 priority. Time-sensitive means that you give yourself a timeline and a deadline for accomplishing your goals. This will push you to avoid procrastination and make things happen!
Take A Long Look At Your Habits
Habits tend to shape our behavior, physical and mental health, and outlook on life, often without our realization. In order to create lasting change in our lives, we must break bad habits and establish good ones. Charles Duhigg, author of several best-selling books on the power of habits, writes that MIT researchers found that all habits can be broken down into a simple neurological loop with three components: cue, routine, and reward. If you determine what your routines are, you can explore and tinker with your habit loops.
Say, for example, that every Sunday night you watch some Netflix and eat two bowls of ice cream, and you realize that this is blocking you from your goal of losing weight. You’ve identified the routine, now experiment with different ways of spending your time. Go for a walk one week, the next week eat a chocolate bar and read a book, and hit a theater the following week. Identifying the cues, rewards, and routines that drive will allow you to tinker with the way you experience cravings and rewards and will allow you to understand and control your habits.
A Clean Slate
We love the New Year because it offers us the possibility of wiping away our mistakes, taking control of our lives, and becoming our best selves. No matter where you are in your life, there’s always room to explore and grow into the you that you want to be! If you’re at a high point, push yourself to keep on growing and evolving. If you’re at a low point, perhaps Tabula Rasa Retreat can offer you the tools you need for medical, psychological, or spiritual growth and healing. Let’s make 2020 our year!
For further information visit www.tabularasaretreat.com or call PT +351 965 751 649 UK +44 7961 355 530