How to Make Your New Year's Resolutions Stick 

   Winning at the "inner Game" of Success 

If you are stuck with recycled goals and the same New Year's Resolutions year after year, it is obvious something is NOT working.  While goal setting and good intensions are a good place to start, habits trump commitments. Nothing will change until you change your subconscious mind by rewiring your mental software and change your belief system. Like goals and intentions, developing new skills and stuffing yourself with all the latest and greatest self-help information is good, none of your efforts will bring about the desired changes in your behavior or your bad habits would have been broken years ago. 

Getting Unstuck and Off  Auto Pilot

Aristotle said,"First we make our habits and then our habits make us.We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit".  You mustfirst identify any self-sabotaging behaviors that are fueled by irrational fears that obstruct your path to success. Failure is caused by neural dissonance or a disconnect between our subconscious belief and established goals. The Amagdhala is our greatest curse and blessing for whether the  potential danger is real or imagined, it lights up and projects the fears fromnegative experiences onto the right prefrontal cortex which holds you back from taking action and moving forward. You must observe it with emotional distance and then move forward to reclaim your personal power. There are various methods to rid yourself of ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts). I personally use hypnosis with my clients to release negativity and recondition the brain so the subconsious or implicity memory matches your consious or explicit goals. By creating neural coherence you will get results and make your New Year's resolutions stick.  

What Would You Be Doing If You Knew You Couldn't Fail? 

Imaginethat you could have it all, what would you do and be in your life? What feats would you dare to accomplish and where would you go? Just imagine your life, lived without limits .In order to reach an intended destination, you have to know your intended destination. Affirmations—clear, definitive statements declaring something is so—solidifies your ideas of where you want to go or how you want to change. Without exception, positive affirmation is the first step to all advancement and achievement. The most powerful and successful affirmations are the ones we design around our goals in the areas of our life that are most important to us: money, health, spiritual connection, a job you love, and great relationships with your family and friends. If you don't take the time to decide what you want for yourself, circumstance or someone else will choose for you. This is not how life is supposed to be.

Affirmations are self-fulfilling prophecies. Think of affirmations as the core principles of the life you are visualizing. Affirmations are your To Be List—powerful reminders throughout the day that keep you on track toward your goals and dreams. You deserve to decide for yourself exactly what and who you'll become and what you'll acquire along the way.

Through a process we call neural reconditioning, you can take those goals and dreams and turn them into neural patterns in your subconscious brain. Let's take the analogy of running a marathon. Whether or not you've ever actually run a marathon before, you probably have a pretty good idea of what it takes to get in shape for something like this. It's not just something you can decide one day and do the next. It takes time and consistency. It takes an applied methodical effort. You need to workout daily, breaking in your system bit by bit, toning and strengthening your muscles, training your lungs and heart, until gradually your entire system had become acclimated to the new demands you are asking of it. You see, your entire nervous system is set up to help you establish habits. After it understands that you want to perform an activity over and over again, it makes those corresponding neural pathways very efficient so that it becomes easier for you.

This is exactly what you are going to do with your brain. Positive affirmations form new facts and data for the subconscious brain to hardwire. It takes daily, consistent effort.

Here's how you can begin to recondition your brain:

Create a new, powerful, physical and mental vision. Make your goals emotionally rich and crystal clear.

Create powerful declarations and affirmations in each category—health, wealth, relationships, business and spirituality—that support your new vision.

Use a portfolio of imprinting material, which may include written, auditory, visual and subliminal pieces. Through repetition—affirmations on audio, visualization and meditation—you will begin to replace your old beliefs and habits with new ones.

Maintain a daily routine of reconditioning techniques: For five to seven minutes, three times a day, use photos, vision boards, mental movies, self-guided imagery, real-life movies, and recorded and laminated affirmations

Practice meditation daily. Meditation can increase your focus and concentration, increase your power of concentration and attune the brain to receive the answers, tools and resources needed to fulfill that vision.

Your mind is like a mental muscle, and you want to start out working this muscle just as you would a bicep. By strengthening your ability to quiet your mind, you will increase your power of intent and focus. As you do so, elements of your personal and business success will start to take shape in your mind.

Mindfulness should no longer be considered a "nice-to-have" for executives. It's a "must-have":  a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress. It can be integrated into one's religious or spiritual life, or practiced as a form of secular mental training.  When we take a seat, take a breath, and commit to being mindful, particularly when we gather with others who are doing the same, we have the potential to be changed.

We need a vision for our lives, or else nothing we do means anything. No matter what your current circumstances, if you can imagine something better for yourself, you can create it.

Let's take a look at what happens in our brain when we visualize the future. There are two parts of our brain—the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious part of the brain is the part we are aware of; the conscious brain focuses on one thing at a time, whatever we think is important at the moment.

The subconscious brain doesn't think this way. The subconscious brain sees a complete picture of everything happening all at once. The subconscious mind is aware of the input from all of your senses at every moment.

Your conscious brain…

    •    The amount of information your conscious brain processes is about one-half of the one-millionth of one percent of the amount your subconscious brain processes.

    •    For all its brilliance, the conscious brain has a major weakness—follow through.

    •    The conscious brain is great at imagining things and thinking them through, but it's next to useless when it comes to actually getting things done.

    •    Your conscious brain is amazing at coming up with ideas, but useless when it comes to carrying them out because it is easily distracted. The average person changes focus every six to 10 seconds.

    •    Goal-setting is something your conscious brain can do.

Your subconscious brain…

    •    The subconscious brain can remember billions of things in perfect sequence, not only for minutes at a time, but for your lifetime. How often does it get distracted? Never.

    •    Goal-attaining is something only your subconscious can do.

The power is in your subconscious brain.

    1.    Write any script you want and play that film out in your imagination. Your subconscious will watch it play out and think it's real. The subconscious mind is a captive audience for the movies we play in our head.

    2.    Realize a mere thought causes measurable biological changes—a scary movie can cause our hearts to race while a different image can evoke biological cues telling your body to relax.

    3.    Combine the stories you are crafting about yourself with powerful emotions. A good story evokes powerful mental images and those images can create an emotional response that is stronger than what is really happening in our lives.

    4.    Visualize your ideal life to reshape your perception of reality, and once that happens, reality conforms to that perception.

How effectively you are able to move an idea from your conscious (imagination) to your subconscious (belief/action) will determine your success. Visualization is the key to making this happen, because your subconscious mind doesn't know that what you are visualizing is only in your imagination. Your life script visualized and acted upon can change the course of your life.

Your mind is like a mental muscle, and you want to start out working this muscle just as you would a bicep. By strengthening your ability to quiet your mind, you will increase your power of intent and focus. As you do so, elements of your personal and business success will start to take shape in your mind.

    •    Sit quietly and comfortably, in a chair or on the floor, hold your hands any way you like.

    •    Sit in a way that is relaxing for you.

    •    Close your eyes and focus on your breath going in and out.

    •    Take a slow deep breath in through your nose, and let it out through your mouth.

    •    Let your breath move freely in and out through your nose, focusing your attention on the base of your nostrils. Do this for six or seven minutes.

    •    You will find that your mind wanders off and becomes engaged in this thought or that thought. Don't criticize yourself when this happens, just gently bring your attention back to a focus on the passage of your breath, slowly in and out.

    •    Continue sitting in that relaxed posture and watch your breath. You may have to repeatedly bring your mind back to focus on your breath, but that's okay. Don't let yourself think you are failing at this. You're not.

It doesn't matter how well you focus on your breath, what matters is that you do the exercise. Focus will become easier with time. Practice every day.

After about two weeks, extend your meditation time to 15 minutes. After another two weeks, try 30 minutes. Keep the consistency of practicing this regularly, every day. If you miss a day, treat it the same way you treat wandering focus—don't chalk it up as failure. Resume your practice the following day.

Through meditation, you develop the ability to stay locked onto your goals like a laser—and when you do, you open the possibility for the quantum field to respond, resonate and supply all those elements you need for the fulfillment of those goals. If you practice meditation regularly, you will be amazed by how you can condition your brain and  achieve your goals faster.

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Your ability to focus, plan, feel or do anything is intimately tied to the mix of five different types of brainwaves your brain is producing at any given moment in time. Your brain produces multiple brainwaves simultaneously, but you are at your best when your brainwaves are perfectly aligned with what you are doing. But here's the problem: Our over-thinking, over-stressed culture forces our brains to stay in the beta wave pattern more than our brains were meant to.

Let's take a closer look at the five different types of brainwaves so you can more fully understand why it's a problem when Beta Waves dominate.

    1.    Beta Waves – This is the one you are in right now. It's associated with being alert, working and stress. It's not conducive to learning.

    2.    Alpha Waves – Slower than Beta and indicates a deep relaxation. Super learning can take place here. It's the bridge between your conscious and unconscious mind and it's associated with being intuitive. This state can be induced through meditation, relaxation and a light trance.

    3.    Theta Waves – Slower still, and normally only experienced when you are drifting off to sleep, waking up or when you dream. Theta waves are associated with increased creativity, accelerated healing and conducive to integrating your emotional experiences and changing behavior. This is the level of the subconscious that holds some of the deepest programming of our behavior.

    4.    Delta Waves – The slowest, normally experienced during deep, dreamless sleep and very deep meditation. These waves are associated with accelerated healing, growth hormone production, and accessing your subconscious in a way not available any other way.

    5.    Gamma Waves – The fastest brain waves, associated with higher mental acuity (not normal thinking or problem solving) and can include flashes of brilliance, sudden bursts of insights, as well as moments of extreme focus and concentration.

Every time you read or listen to an affirmation, it becomes a stronger force in your life. Repeat your affirmations at least twice a day—morning and night. I find myself repeating my affirmations throughout the day, repeating them over and over. Soon you will have most of them memorized.

Are you affirmation positive or negative? We may not always be aware of it, but we all create and repeat affirmations constantly. The problem is, we typically don't pay attention to exactly what those affirmations are saying. Often we go through the day giving ourselves all sorts of contradictory, or even negative messages. We may project confidence to the world around us, while our inner dialogue says… I hope this works. I am so nervous about this. I hope I don't blow it. Affirmations are self fulfilling prophecies. If we say, This is never going to work… then chances are excellent it never will.

Get into the feelings, emotions and associations you have with affirmations. Feel so jazzed up about what you are saying that you feel like it is already there. When you are able to really get into that feeling place, this is when the new neural connections are created. It is essential to remember emotions, clarity and feelings are the key ingredients to creating effective affirmations that will produce results in your world.

Laminate your affirmations. Have your affirmations laminated. Make a couple of copies for home, work, your car and next to your bed.

Use technology to bombard your nonconscious brain with the declarations of the world you want to create. Technology has given us all sorts of wonderful tools we can use.

Audio: Play your affirmations while you are jogging or working out, cleaning house—anytime you would ordinarily listen to music.

Subliminal Audio and Video: You can play subliminal audio and video recordings to yourself throughout the day.

Subliminal Software: There is software available that will play your affirmations to you by flashing them almost invisibly on your computer screen.

When we have absolute clarity about what it is we wish to create, and repeat our affirmations daily, the Law of Attraction does its part with providing you with all you need to create what you want.

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Meditation is what gives you control of your brain waves. Meditation trains your brain so you are able to focus on and broadcast the message of your goals and visions. Meditation makes you better attuned to receive the answers, tools and resources you need to fulfill that vision. It accomplishes this by developing your capacity to modulate and regulate the different frequencies of brain waves emitting.

The four common levels of brain waves can be compared to the four gears of an automobile, with beta being first, alpha second, theta third, and delta fourth. Most of us function in the beta range all day long. Can you imagine driving that sports car in first gear for hours at a time, with your pedal to the metal? Of course not. Yet that is essentially what most of us are doing to ourselves. We're burning out our systems. No wonder so many of us are falling prey to stress-related illness. And no wonder the practice of meditation has such a significant beneficial impact on those same illnesses.

It isn't that beta is bad, there's a lot of power in first gear. That's the gear you use when you first start out; it has the power to move the car from standing to motion. And first gear is great for treacherous conditions like slick ice. But driving around that way all day? You'll fry your gears.

Once you've gotten the car rolling, you've got the initial information figured out, you want to drop back into second gear. As you start to so this, a fascinating thing happens. When you shift your car into second gear, the wheels start turning faster, and your car travels faster, yet your engine slows down.

How is that possible? It's in a different gear. Less effort from the engine. Less fuel, less wear and tear. Less stress. Less heart disease, less stroke, less irritability, less frustration and anger, less depression and anxiety—and you're getting more accomplished.

That's also a description of your life when you regularly recondition your brain with meditation. With meditation you can acquire an awareness of who and what you really are. We can tune in to finer signals and pick up information crucial to helping us achieve our goals when we meditate and escape from our frenetic pace.

 

Neural linking uses emotional association to deepen the impact of your affirmations. By linking your affirmations with feelings that already exist in your memory, you can create emotional anchors that will make your affirmations even more powerful.

Most likely, you have memories that are so powerful and vivid you can revisit them and feel the same way you felt when that memory was created. That's what you need to do to create a neural link. For example, I go back to a moment and reexperience the feeling I had of being in complete control, on top of the world when I was playing an unforgettable basketball game—and then I think "I am a brilliant and savvy businessperson."

I attach that exhilarated feeling to this new belief I want to instill, using the emotion and the neural pathways that are already in place, and associating that 30-year-old feeling with this new belief. You can put that associative trait to work for you by designing specific links for yourself.

    1.    Search your memory banks for a positive event in your life that was especially empowering, a moment where you felt a thrill of accomplishment, excitement or triumph.

    2.    Make a list of positive events so you can easily identify them later on.

    3.    Close your eyes and let yourself reexperience that event and examine what you're seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling.

    4.    Jot down a few of the impressions you had. What feelings did this experience provoke?

    5.    Choose one of your affirmations. In my case, I chose, "I am a brilliant and savvy businessperson," since this is not a belief I grew up with, and yet it has been critical to my achieving success in my business visions.

    6.    Close your eyes again and let yourself reexperience that powerful memory, evoking all the sensory impressions, feelings and emotions involved. While you are at the height of that feeling, repeat your new affirmation, either out loud or in your mind.

You will make your dreams come true faster than you ever thought possible when you imprint your affirmations to your nonconscious brain by using emotional anchors.