~ 5 min read

New Year’s resolutions are kind of for chumps, I think. They sometimes help, they’re usually always set with good intentions, but for the most part are fruitless and leave us feeling like a failure. This is because the very act of goal setting can be fraught, as it frames the thing we want as something outside our self.

Yes, we definitely need to be clear about what we want, but we can’t do it from the energy of a little kid who’s sorry and sulky after being told off for ransacking the lolly jar, but who really, secretly, just wants to keep scoffing gummy bears uninterrupted. Wanting something isn’t enough, we need to choose it. It doesn’t matter how firm we can be with ourselves, if we don’t address the reason why we engage in an undesirable behavior to begin with, it’s like meticulously labeling all your kids back to school stationary while the school burns down.

Like other animals, we run on impulses much more of the time than we care to admit. It's estimated around 80-90% of our daily thoughts are repetitive or similar to previous days. Psychology calls these automatic thoughts, and they reflect our core beliefs - our most deeply held assumptions about ourselves, the world, and others.

For example, no matter how much someone might want to lose weight, if they have a subconscious core belief that it’s not safe to be attractive, their subconscious is going to do whatever it needs to keep that weight on. If there are things in your life you’ve struggled to change despite working hard to do so, I guarantee you are running a subconscious program that was probably installed in you at a very young age. This means there are parts of your mind that believe something really bad would happen if you actually stopped doing that thing.

The good news here is that we have more power to change these than we think.

We can try to change by recruiting the conscious mind. With enough conscious repetition the subconscious will start to rewrite itself. So, you can say to yourself a hundred times a day, “I’m safe to be attractive”, noticing any resistance that comes up and making space for it to move through you. It’s helpful to add “I choose to KNOW, it’s safe to be attractive”. This tells your rational mind even though the statement might not feel true, you recognize consciously that’s just old stuff and from now on are choosing to rewrite a new reality for yourself.

OR… we can try to change by talking directly to the more powerful subconscious mind. The brain doesn’t know the difference between thought and what is really happening. So, the more you can imagine what you want, how it feels, even what it tastes or smells like, the more that’s going to become an internalized reality for you. This is what athletes do before performances. If you focus on how much you want to quit smoking, and how strong you will be in the face of urges, it’s simply strengthening the neural networks of being a smoker. We need to drop that sense of fighting ourselves: what we resist persists. Instead, see yourself easily lounging on the couch after lunch, disgusted at the thought of lighting up. A step further would be to try and dialogue with the part of you that wants to smoke (or whatever it is you are trying to change) - it’s always more than just a chemical or behavioral addiction. Maybe write it a letter and let it write back. Try to get to the bottom of where that part of you learned it had to do that thing to keep safe and offer it some compassion and understanding. Then try to update that belief, letting it know circumstances have changed, and try to reach a mutual agreement.

In approaching our undesirable parts in this way some huge and rapid neural remodeling can take place and the very cells in your body respond effortlessly, making way for what can seem like the impossible.