Why your New Resolutions are probably more harmful than helpful!

I always love this time of year of families getting together, lots of beach-time (in SA at least) and just time-out from the business of normal life. It’s also the time of year when we start reflecting on the past year, and planning, wishing and dreaming for the year ahead.

New years’ resolutions used to be the go-to’s at this time of year. We’d all ask our friends what we were giving up, starting or becoming in the New Year & for the most part, we’d all jump on board with some crazy HUGE aspirations to be someone-ELSE next year. The thing with New Years resolutions is that it’s always ‘next year’; year after year we repeat this cycle, hoping that this year things (or WE) will change.

Why do New Years Resolutions never work?

If you’re anything like me, you probably spend the first half of the year resenting yourself for giving-in to chocolate, working long hours, remaining critical or sceptical or lazy or just plain ‘over-it’; and then by about March you start each week with a “On a Monday it all changes…”. By June you throw in the towel, and decide that this ‘change’ is clearly NOT for this current year & that you will try again next year. And so the second half of the year is the first time you actually start loving yourself again, and I don’t mean just giving-in to your ‘grumpy inner child’ who got you to eat everything in-sight for the first half of the year. But actually by August, you find you’re kinder to yourself & actually enjoying it.

Well, that is until October when you’re reminded that the end of the year is approaching fast, and so you call your life coach, psychologist, best friend – announce again that life just isn’t making sense, you’re not getting anywhere and you actually don’t know where it all went wrong, again. She encourages you to join a bikini-challenge/5 days to get fit-type program and you spend the last month of the ‘working’ year bowing to self-doubt, your new-found addiction and swearing from January that THIS will be the new YOU. But then December comes, and as does food & family, and as the 31st December approaches, you get your latest notepad out & jot down the very same New Years Resolutions you set last year. And so it begins. Again.

Now I know that was a little over-exagerated, but I’m sure you get the drift.

What New Years Resolutions forget is that…

Change is hectic & hard and takes huge discipline, as does pursuing our dreams or taking up a new positive habit. Change happens when we live with intention everyday, not just for the first week of the year.

Don’t let me lose you here, I know you were SO excited to set your annual resolutions and this just ruined everything; but I promise there is a way to make this work!!!

Making change work…

1. Join me for “Say YES to 2015”

This inspirational morning will be spent digging into what goal setting should really look like & getting you dreaming, discovering & creating a plan for you to make 2015 your best year yet!