Most of us make New Years Resolutions. We make the same or similar resolutions each year. There are many reasons why we are not successful. Each of us is different and one cure will not serve all the same way.
But, we each have at least one Mission Impossible in our future. Some of us know exactly what it is and have laid out a plan to attack it; and, chip away until we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Others think we know what we want and don’t really define the one big mission to save our future.
Years go by and the remoteness and likelihood of completing that mission wane. We literally give up and forget the mission, especially if it has to do with our health. Why? Most of the time it is a habit. We get into a daily habit and cannot get out of it. It limits what we can and want to do. Our comfort zones are too comfortable.
How do we break habits? For some of us it can be done ‘cold turkey’. But, that is for those superstars among us who can conquer those types of challenges. I’ve heard, and I’m sure you have also, of those few people who quit smoking and never smoked again. What got into those people to accomplish something like that?
Dr. Morris Massey tells us that Significant Emotional Events cause significant changes in our lives. It is something that happens to us or someone very close to us. It can be a near-death experience or survival from cancer or another disease. We get a new lease on life and we want to make the best of it.
Yet, for the vast majority, that is not the case. We want change and can’t achieve it. Jeff Olson, in his book, The Slight Edge, talks about incremental change. These are changes that are so slight that we don’t notice them. It is what got us into trouble the first time. We drifted away from the direction we wanted go and didn’t notice it until we were fully ensconced in our current health (and habits).
You want to change for 2017, you might consider making incremental changes daily to achieve that impossible mission.