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29 March 2024

10 secrets to making those resolutions stick

Crane says quitting smoking is easy if done correctly. (GETTY IMAGES)

Published
By Dave Crane

Are you planning to stop smoking, lose weight or find love in 2010? Ninety-nine per cent of resolutions never happen because of 10 things.

Now that 2010 is here, are you among those people who are making promises to change their lives for the better? But 99 per cent of people's resolutions never come true.

Often people think that when their dreams come true, they will be happy. Well, from my experience, the only way to guarantee a perfect happy life is to design it yourself.

That's what I will be helping thousands of people to do in 2010. And if you follow these 10 simple steps your wildest dreams will become reality.

This is how to do a New Year's Resolution properly.

Let's take stopping smoking as a classic example…

1. Make it positive: Your mind doesn't know the difference between positives and negatives. It just processes all information as a positive.

Therefore 'I don't want to smoke in 2010' becomes 'I want to smoke in 2010'.

Instead say, " I am quitting smoking in 2010'.

2. Choose very carefully the exact words you use: So you aren't 'giving up smoking' as that implies that smoking is like chocolate or something you love. You are stopping not giving up.

3. Make sure you have the right internal pressures: Choose a direction. Are you a 'going to' or 'moving away from' person? Everyone has a different motivator. So you may be happier aiming for 'removing all chances of getting lung cancer forever' rather than 'breathing pure air through clean lungs' . Decide which one and write it down.

4. Make sure that your goals are manageable and realistic: Not that you have to spoil the dream but winning the lottery or flying to the moon might not happen (for a while) however much you may want it!

5. Create three versions of your goal: Having something to show for it at the end of the day is very important. We want to avoid any feelings of failure. There are three ways to grade this. I use the Three Es: Easy, or the bare minimum you must achieve; Expected, or the amount that would make you feel like a success and will keep you satisfied; and Extraordinary–what you think is wildly awesome and beyond your wildest dreams.

So then you can have respectively: Easy – reduce my smoking by 50 per cent; Expected – become a 100 per cent non smoker completely; and Extraordinary – become a non smoker, join a gym, lose all my puppy fat and run a marathon.

Why not? Achieve any of these and you will feel great.

6. Get an accountability partner: If you are left to your own devices, you probably will not do anything or you might forget and leave it because you became occupied with something else.

7. Make sure this is something you really want: There is nothing worse than putting all your energy and effort into someone else's dream.

E.g. stopping smoking because someone else wants you to and you do not.

8. Write a checklist: Note down all the many things that you can do which could help you to achieve your goals. Be creative. Start with your first choice and as many fallback options as you can think of.

9. Decide what you are going to do first: Write it down and put down a date whereby you have to start it and finish it.

10. Make a vision board: Place all the pictures you want onto a big cork board and stick them where you can see them every day. Even better, make a video of them and place the video on your phone so that you can watch it all the time.

More information on Dave Crane and making your new resolutions is available at the site www.thelifedesignacademy.com

 

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