It’s that time of year again.

You’re wondering what to pick as your New Year’s resolution for 2015. You want to pick something that will enrich your life, and perhaps most importantly, something on which you’ll actually follow-through this time!

“Attitude is everything.” Every single day you make a choice. What are you choosing to focus on? You can spend most of your energy noticing the barriers in your path, or you can choose to spend your time and energy focusing on what you want, possibilities, joy and abundance. The choice is yours to make.

The single most important resolution one can make in life is one which I’ve helped many of my clients tackle, one on which I’ve also focused in my own life as well.

This year, I invite you to make your 2015 New Year’s Resolution to

***Build up my positive thinking muscles and

learn how to quickly release unhelpful negative thoughts.***

If you haven’t yet decided what your 2015 resolution is going to be, here are 3 reasons why this is the New Year’s resolution to choose:

1. The benefits of doing this will spread into every area of your life, making it one of the most worthwhile resolutions you can choose. Today there is an abundance of research showing the positive physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational effects of positive thinking. Your body, your mind, your clients, your boss, and especially your loved ones – will all thank you for becoming a more positive person.
2. Taking control of your life by taking control of what you spend your time thinking about is absolutely possible! Ever hear the phrase “mind over matter?” The truth is that what we think about plays a large role in creating our reality.
3. Anyone can do it. Regardless of life circumstance, YOU can do it. You don’t need any money. You don’t need a mansion or your own gym equipment. All you need is a few minutes every day, and these can even be minutes you’re already spending in the shower, on your commute, or on your walk to the store.

Although you may find this to be one of the more challenging resolutions to set, you can follow the 7 steps below to ensure that 2015 will be the year you stick to your New Year’s resolution, the year you learn how to choose and attract positivity, hope, inspiration, beauty, fun, and vitality!

I’ve found following these 7 steps to be most helpful for clients of mine who have set out to live happier, more upbeat lives:

Step 1: Make the choice and set a clear goal. We achieve what we set out to achieve. So it’s important to be specific about what exactly you want. Do you want to think more positive thoughts than negative thoughts? Do you want to feel confident and let go of old thinking patterns that contributed to low self-esteem? Do you want to leave work at the office and stop bringing stress home with you? Whatever it is you want, name it. See if you can’t make it something that passes the Mt. Everest test too – just like if your goal were to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest, put your goal into terms which will allow you to a) imagine what it will be like to reach it, and b) know when you’ve reached it.

The other important point here is to acknowledge that you’re making a choice. And you’re the only one who can make it. If you don’t take the reins on this, no one else will. If you don’t put in the work, no one else will. It’s a choice you’ll be making day in and day out.

Be sure to write your goal down and put it somewhere you’ll see it every day. (The bathroom mirror is a favorite choice for many of my clients.)

Step 2: Visualize the end. Even though this step is often the easiest and most enjoyable, this step is absolutely crucial! Being able to see and feel what your life will be like if you keep your resolution and reach your goal will be something that will sustain you all year. Runners visualize crossing the finish line and hold onto that vision while they run over each of the hills of their marathons. It works! It helps you stay focused on why reaching your goal is worth it for you. So take a few moments, close your eyes if you’d like, and imagine what your life will be like when you’ve mastered the art of positive thinking.

To really use the full power of visualization, imagine what you’ll feel like once you’ve accomplished your goal. See if you can’t even feel right now how you imagine you’ll feel then, as if the change has already happened. Imagine what you’ll be doing, what you’ll be saying, who you’ll be spending time with… How amazing would it be to have hope, to feel confident, to look forward to tomorrow regardless of whether it’s a work day, a weekend, or you’re on vacation. Just imagine!

While some of you might chuckle at this suggestion, it really does help to literally draw a picture, or at least write it out.

Step 3: Take stock of where you are now. Scan through your day or your week and think about some of most frequently recurring thoughts you’ve had about work, money, your home, family, friends, your business partner or significant other, your body, your education, things you’d like to do or have to do, or decisions you’ve made in the past. The thoughts that come to mind as you do this scan might be those that come to you most frequently when you first wake up in the morning, as you’re trying to fall asleep, or at the end of the weekend. As you think of them, try to sort them into positive and negative thoughts, with any self-critical, judgmental, regretful, sad, anxious, or angry thoughts going on one sheet of paper and any confident, optimistic, excited, fun, happy, loving, generous thoughts on an entirely separate sheet of paper.

If you imagine putting your lists onto either side of a scale and your negative thoughts outweigh your positive thoughts, then this is the resolution for you! You’re on the right track. And now that you’re setting this as your intention, things can only get better from here!

*It’s important to limit this exercise to just about 5 minutes tops since thinking of the most common negative thoughts that cross your mind can quickly get you feeling pretty negative and might even push you off track altogether. So, just do enough to get yourself started and then cut it off at 5 minutes. You’ll quickly see the point.

Step 4: Make a plan to develop a new habit. This can be the most challenging step in reaching any goal. All those resolutions you didn’t meet in years past didn’t make the cut because you hadn’t yet changed your habits. So, as you make your plan, be strategic. Think about what it will actually take to reach your goal. Life not going the way we want it to is not the only reason we get into a trap of negativity. More often than not the single biggest reason we keep feeling stressed out, angry, hopeless, anxious, or sad year after year is that we’re in the habit of feeling those ways.

Spend a few minutes reflecting on these questions to find clues about what it will take for you to choose more of the thoughts you want:

• When has maintaining a positive outlook felt easier for you? What elements of your life in those moments can you easily replicate?
• What have you noticed helps stop your mind from spinning into negativity?

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Then, as you create your plan, think about what it will really take for YOU to create a new habit and begin to think more positively. The plans I develop with my clients often include things like:

• Start a morning/evening gratitude practice. Start small by thinking of 1 thing for which you’re truly grateful each morning. You can do this during your morning shower or as you pour your morning coffee. Gratitude is a quick way to shift from negative thinking to positive thinking; that’s why everyone’s doing it these days!
• Create a container into which you’ll place any negative thought that comes to mind. You may decide to use an old tissue box as your negative thought “trash can.” Anytime a negative thought comes up, you can acknowledge it, write it down, and then release it by putting it to the side into its container. ***It’s important to note, the goal of positive thinking is not to ignore or deny your negative thoughts. Rather, the aim is to learn how to keep negative thoughts from controlling your life.
• Fill your mind with positive thoughts. You may even decide to make a game of it. You might challenge yourself to see how many positive thoughts you can come up with during your morning commute. You may decide you need a partner to keep you on task who can start an email thread with you in which you two volley positive thoughts back and forth to each other throughout the week.
• Set aside time to laugh and smile. If babies do it for you, go hang out with some. If animals are your thing, go hang in the dog park or take your own for a long walk. If you can’t get enough of Sarah Silverman, put watching her on YouTube onto your daily to do list. By setting your intention to laugh or smile each day, you’ll be building up your positivity muscles and training your eye and ear to look for more of the same.

These are just a few examples. I bet you can think of others that might work even better for you.

Once you’ve got your own unique plan, keep it simple and jot down 1 to 3 things you’re going to do every day to get into the habit of thinking positively.

Step 5: Take action. Now. Right now. Put down this blog post for a moment and think of one positive thing.

You’re going to choose a resolution you think will improve the quality of your life. You’re choosing to invest in YOU. There will be an exciting outcome you can already imagine. Those are three positive thoughts right there. And you’ve probably just come up with at least one more too.

The important thing here is to make sure you don’t stop at the planning stage. And don’t just say you’ll start tomorrow. It takes 5 seconds to take action on this resolution right now. So, think Nike and Just do it!

Step 6: Start tracking your progress right away. There’s nothing that derails a New Year’s resolution faster than making it on New Year’s eve and then watching January 10^th roll around as you realize you haven’t taken one step towards it.

So see if you can create a simple document to track whether or not you did the 1 to 3 things you put in your plan to do every day. The easiest way to see progress is to measure it. And no matter what your New Year’s resolution is, you’ve chosen it because it’s not second nature yet, because it’s not something you’re doing every day yet. So track your efforts and watch them grow.

And then, as you see more and more check marks, celebrate!!! Your New Year’s resolution is your gift to you. Celebrating your progress reminds you of just how hard it was to get where you are, of just how important the decision felt when you made it. Celebrate the gift you’ve chosen to give yourself.

Step 7: Revise as necessary. Challenge yourself to stick with your plan, to stay committed to your New Year’s Resolution, and to look at the parts that remain difficult to see if you might need to try a new approach. A month or two into the new year be sure to also take a look for any elements of your plan that have become too easy, and challenge yourself to set your standards higher, to see if you can take your positive thinking to the next level. Whatever you do, don’t let the fact that you still have negative thoughts in March throw you off your track. Remember the choice you made, the conviction you had when you made it, and choose to stick with it in whatever modified form makes it most useful to you.

As you revise be sure to keep step 5 in mind. It’s not enough to plan or to revise, whether in its original or revised form, in order to reach your goal every plan needs action!

I wish you all a year you absolutely LOVE, a year filled with gratitude and an abundance of reasons to feel it!

*** Leave a comment! Whether you choose a similar New Year’s resolution to the one I’ve suggested or you apply the steps above to an entirely different resolution, let me know what you think of this post. I’d love your thoughts and feedback! And, of course, if you have additional tips to offer, please share them too!

Share this post with someone you think might enjoy it!

Wishing you a wonderful New Year!

~Becky

Becky Emet, MSW, MBA

Career Coach | Life Coach

Choose A Life You Love founder

New Year’s Resolution 2015 – Special Offer

***Offering a second coaching session FREE to all new clients who contact me by Sunday, January 4, 2015***

Do you want to find the career path that will finally feel fulfilling? Do you want to make sure you actually stick to your New Year’s Resolution this year? Do you want to take the steps you need to take in 2015 to create a life you absolutely LOVE?

Email me today to schedule a FREE coaching consultation to learn more about this special offer and to see whether coaching is right for you – info@ChooseALifeYouLove.com

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