How are your New Year’s Resolutions doing? Are you happy with your progress?
Eager excitement and anticipation blaze in our New Year’s celebrations.
We are determined to make this year much better than the last which just gratefully passed.
Now, barely several weeks into the New Year, many of us feel the Gnawing Nags of Negativity signaling New Years Resolution Remorse.
We have not done and are not doing all of the things we were so enthusiastically determined to do.
The power of habits, inertia and the demands of life seem to be dragging us back into the same ruts we wanted to escape. So what do we do?
Here are a few key Happiness Habits to help you redouble your determination and desire to achieve your New Year’s goals and aspirations:
Don’t Beat Yourself Up – Criticizing and castigating yourself is damaging, demoralizing and very counterproductive. We do it because as children, adults punished us in efforts to improve our behavior, so we do it to ourselves thinking it will make us better. It doesn’t, it defeats us.
Expect Lapses and Plan for Them – Many successful personal development programs grow in fits and starts with great leaps forward alternating with relapses backwards. The key is to learn how to handle your relapses well.
Failure Is NOT Falling Down, It’s Staying Down – Giving up because you made a goof or series of goofs is a grievous condemnation and limitation on your future performance. Successful people make mistakes, they are also determined not be defeated by them.
Misery Is Meant To Make Us Move – Those Gnawing Nags of Remorse and Negativity are a powerful, helpful signs you are slipping back into patterns and behaviors you resolved to avoid. Say “Thank you Resolution Remorse, you are reminding me and reinforcing my resolve to achieve my goals.”
Redouble Your Determination, Drive and Desire – Your dreams haven’t changed, you are just disappointed in your recent actions to attain them. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Reinforce your resolve to work hard to achieve your goals.
Drive Discipline With Desire – Don’t view discipline as deprivation, see discipline as steps to dream realization. The secret to successful discipline is to always desire something positive more than whatever tempts you. Fire up and redouble your desire to achieve your goals.
See Small, Very Specific Steps To Success – Start small, construct your process as a series of small, very specific steps that lead to dream fulfillment. Continually celebrating successful completion of each step sets you up for a series of successes.
Lapses Mean You Have To Work Even Harder – Make up for your mistakes and work hard to catch up and stay on track.
Continually Recall And Reinforce Your Resolve – Remember and relive the feelings that lead to your resolution. Continually reinforce your desire and determination, rekindle your resolve to achieve your dream.
Happy New Year from Michele Moore and the Happiness Habit Team!
Copyright 1999- , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Explore HappinessHabit.com and HappinessBlog.com. Our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors. Photograph from Dreamstime.com
We are at our best and able to perform our best when we are Up, energized, enthusiastic and happy.
Of Course Not! All the Habitually Happy people we interviewed and studied said they experienced sadness, grief, distress, regret and various forms of mental malaise just like the rest of us.
To be happy, practice doing YOUR best, feeling YOUR best and being YOUR best self all of the time.
Don’t Beat Yourself UP!
Huge increases in happiness come from simply deciding to avoid all unnecessary, non-productive negativity.
Savor Pleasing Sensations – warm sunshine on your face, a soft breeze on your skin, the taste of a favorite tea.
Everyone has dangerous, deranged thoughts from time to time, even the happiest, most admirable, sane and stable people among us.
Lives of great leaders inspire, excite and challenge us to live better, happier, more fulfilling lives ourselves.
We all know a few special people who always seem to be truly UP, energized and happy. They light up a room and our lives with their presence.
Over a period of several years, Happiness Habit interviewed and studied habitually happy, genuinely joyous people from many different walks of life and personal situations.
