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NY's Resolutions: Making them Work

The New Year is a time of renewal and it is the time of year that we try to make ourselves fix the imbalances in our lives by forcing willpower. Willpower is temporary, however, and once it breaks, we are back to old habits that no longer serve us. So how do we stick to our NY resolutions when all willpower is gone?

Change your thinking. Changing our thinking is the first step and possibly the single most important step to truly living a healthy lifestyle. Our thought processes create our feelings and our feelings create our actions.

Willpower tries to change the action, but not the feelings that inspire the action. Willpower, without a change in thought, is like locking 500 yummy chocolate cakes in a closet. Great idea, but if you know where the key is, there is no point in the lock. Once the willpower is gone, the key is within easy reach, so are the cakes and there goes the diet.

We can all feel the desire for the chocolate cakes, the ciggie, the couch instead of the gym. What if your desire for cake, ciggies and the couch did not have the pull over you they presently have?

Step back the next time you feel the desire for an item you no longer wish to have in your life. Give yourself ten minutes to withdraw from the action. Sit quietly for several minutes and look inside. Get silent and really feel your desire. What is at its base?

Finding the base issue for our desire is the same as finding the root cause. This can take time and may not work the first few times, but be diligent and eventually you will find the draw in your desire.

Let’s say you love chocolate donuts. You can really go on a binge and eat several at a time. You have been known to go to the nearest donut house and get two dozen, eating them in one sitting.

Sitting quietly, allowing the donuts to draw you, you think about the donuts and what they represent. Perhaps you had chocolate donuts as a kid. Maybe your mother gave them to you as a special treat, a way of saying “I love you.” Your attachment to donuts is much clearer. You eat to connect to a time when you felt truly loved. It is not the donut you desire, but the feelings of unconditional love you felt when you ate them as a child.

The unconditional love came from someone else, but you can supply it, by loving yourself unconditionally. Perhaps in eating two dozen donuts you end up hating yourself. You have just created the exact opposite of what you wanted to create in getting the donuts in the first place. Donuts no longer make sense. This is the first step to breaking the hold donuts have over you.

If you know what an item means to you, you can choose other ways of getting the same result. You can choose happier, heathier ways of creating the same feelings donuts are supposed to create in you. Maybe you just need to accept that unconditional self love is what you need and no donut can ever give you that. This is where the real work, the work on self begins. This is the turning point and this is the time to either ignore your new found knowledge or to begin creating a better you.

You now know that you desire self-love, so the next time you berate yourself for something STOP! Yelling at yourself causes you to feel bad and that causes you to desire to feel good and that leads to donuts. If you start speaking to yourself kindly, lovingly, you may find that your need to feel good through donuts is no longer an issue.

Your NY’s resolution is not to stop eating donuts, but to start speaking to yourself in a positive and loving way. For every bad thought you have, feel it and acknowledge how it makes you feel. Immediately after, replace it with a positive thought. Now, how do you feel? Replacing bad thoughts with good thoughts repeatedly will eventually lead you to far more than just losing that donut craving. It may cause you to get out of bad relationship or to change that job makes you feel useless.

Take control of your thoughts and you do not need willpower, you are in control. What would your life be like if you were in control? What could you achieve? What could you become? Give your thoughts a break and watch your life change.

If you would like to contact Maria you may email her at: ellobousa@yahoo.com

By Maria Etta Anabel