As 2007 approaches, you may be examining your life and making a resolution for the New Year. Whether its losing weight, starting to exercise or getting organized, most of us have some area of our life that we would like to improve. Ideally, this desire for self- improvement is very positive and should serve to inspire us. However, despite our best intentions, most new years resolutions shine a spot light on what is not working in our lives. While you WANT to focus on your desired goal of feeling better, improving your health, benefiting from a clean and organized desk, after a few days or weeks, many of us end up slipping back into our old habits. So what goes wrong? What usually happens is that you have inadvertently ended up focusing more on the problem then on the solution you would like to create.
Research has determined that it takes a minimum of 21 days to break a habit or establish a new routine and pattern of behavior. Even if you have a strong desire to achieve a new goal in your life, it takes a while for this new desire to build momentum and create a new train of thought. What goes wrong with some of our New Year’s resolutions is that the old train of thought about your weight, exercise routine or the clutter on your desk, has already built a powerful momentum in a negative direction, so it has more influence and pulling power in your life. If you can repeat a new thought or a new action for at least 21 days, you have a better chance of actually maintaining it and incorporating it into your daily life.
So instead of picking one area of your life that you want to focus on, perhaps you could consider an entirely different resolution. What about simply practicing a little positive thinking? Your resolution could be to practice being positive once a day. Resolve to notice when you are being negative about something, and then find one simple positive thought that you can honestly say about this situation in your life. If you change your train of thought in a positive direction once a day for 21 days, you will be amazed at the momentum of positive energy that will begin to pour into your life. The more you practice the better you will get.
Some people like to say that positive thinking does not work, because you can be positive that you have no money, or feel positive that the situation you are faced with will never improve. The semantics of the words you use are really not what is important here. You can practice positive and or affirmative thinking. The point is to create a positive feeling inside of you, because your emotions are energy in motion and they determine the energy you emit and subsequently attract back into you life experience. That is why it is so useful to start paying attention to not only what you think, but also what you feel.
Despite years of training not to be emotional, that is what you must learn to be, if you want to tap into your creative power and achieve your goals and resolutions. If you are not succeeding in achieving a personal or professional goal, you have to figure out what it is that you are thinking and feeling that is creating this glitch in your life. People often like to argue with me about this and will tell me that they don’t know how they feel. While I believe you may have been convinced that this is true, there is no way that this is possible. If I stepped on your foot, or punched you in the nose, it would hurt, and you would know how you feel. If I offered you a winning lottery ticket or a luxurious vacation that was paid for, you would know how you feel. The same is true when you think or hear something that you either do or do not like. Even if you can’t define exactly how you feel, you do know that it either feels good, or feels bad, and that is really all the information you need to get started.
You have to remember that your emotions are just feedback that your internal operating system is providing you, in order to let you know what direction you are headed, and what you are in the process of creating. Ignoring the feedback of your emotions is like asking for a map when you are lost, and then ignoring what it is telling you to do. Now that would be ridiculous! Think how annoyed you get when you are with a man who refuses to ask for directions… Well that is what you are doing when you ignore the information your emotions are providing you.
So consider making new kind of resolution this year. Resolve to pay attention to what you think and feel, and remember that the achievement of any goal is always a process of creation that starts from the inside out. It always begins with one thought that is focused on and attracts more thoughts with similar frequencies, until eventually enough energy is amassed and a thought form is created. This is the point in the creative process when your ability to focus comes into play and determines how successful you are in creating your goal into something tangible that you can see, touch and experience. But just remember, it all begins with paying attention to what you think and most importantly what you feel. It really is ok to be emotional. You need all of your emotions, the ones you like and the one you don’t. Paying attention to them is the only way you can really create a Happy New Year!
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