Resolution Folly

It's barely the new year. Like most people, you've probably made a
few resolutions about things to change—tackle some personality
quirk, your physical appearance, your activity level, the way you relate
to others, the amount of time you spend with the family.

We get a flash in our brain of the way we could look or the life we
could lead or the time we will have, bite the bullet and set a goal of
saying no or exercising more.

Unfortunately, studies show that the new-year's-resolution approach
to goal-setting—you get a lightning vision of how things could be
different, decide on a goal based on what you want to get away from and
invoke brute will power to act on it—rarely lasts. Your good intentions
may even have evaporated already. The change you willed doesn't survive
the first challenge to the smooth deployment of your new routine.

There is a better way. You set the same goal and make the same
changes to your routines. Only they stick, no matter how much stress you
encounter, no matter how many times you are thrown off track by life's
everyday challenges. You are motivated to pick yourself up and work on
that goal-and you get there.

The difference between doomed resolutions and sustained change
isn't something magical that you lack and everyone else seems to have.
No, it's your relationship to the future, insists Ti Caine, a
hypnotherapist and life coach based in Sherman Oaks, California.

New-year's-resolution-type of goal-setting usually involves a
one-shot connection to the future. To create lasting change, on the other
hand, you don't tackle change right off the bat; you first look at where
you want to go. You need to build a complete vision of the future that
you want so that you can live with it every day of the present.

Most resolutions are made out of fear and desperation; those
energies, however, can drive motivation only a few weeks. The only energy
that can sustain success is falling in love with your future. Like
building a house, you start by creating a blueprint of the finished
house; only then can you begin building. You don't just decide to build a
house, run to Home Depot, buy whatever materials are on hand and start
building. Unfortunately, that's how most people build their lives.

"Successful people have an ongoing, passionate connection to their
dreams for the future that keeps them motivated to take the steps
everyday to create what they want," says Caine. "They see their future in
its wholeness, visualize its extension into all the domains of their
life. That allows them to create lots of mental paths to it." You make a
commitment to change your whole life; that's what makes Caine's
FutureVisioning process so powerful.

It's like cleaning your house. "The fastest way to get it done is
by getting excited about the future," says Caine. It's easy to clean the
house when you've got someplace exciting to go."

Having a clear vision of a wonderful future is the first
necessary action step-but it typically stirs up a set of emotional
roadblocks. These come at us in the form of fears both of failing and of
succeeding, and in doubts about our own worthiness for success.

So the next critical action step is to identify your fears
and doubts about success, then look under them to uncover the core
beliefs you hold about yourself that are sabotaging your efforts at
change. Earlier articles in the series, archived on the website, can help
you through the process.

Then you are ready to map out the path. You define the
sequence of bite-size steps that make the difference between here and
what you want. Starting on the first one, you look at the resources and
strategies that can be developed to help fix that particular
circumstance.

Imagine a future three years from now where you have achieved the
success you want and everything in your life is working the way you want
it to be. Visualize all the domains of your life: physical, emotional,
financial, career, relationship, social and spiritual. Take the time to
write down what you really want for yourself; it helps you greatly
clarify and stay connected to your goals.

Then, working back from that future, fill in the steps to get
there. Consider what elements would need to be done in a year to be where
you want in three years. Then look at what you need to be doing in six
months, one month and one week. Then tomorrow. And today; you start doing
today what you can. You can't go from couch potato to marathoner in a
day, but if that's what you want in a year, you can start today by
walking three times a week, and build a program in increments.

"Pretend you are your future self and do what they are doing," says
Caine. "The qualities of being where you want to be define the steps to
get there. What you do must be in keeping with who you will
become."