How Psych-K can help your New Year’s Resolutions to last

As soon as Christmas is over and we’re into January, there’s a sort of pressure to make the most of the coming year. Many of us decide that’s it’s time for a fresh start, and we leap into the first couple of months of the year full of good intentions and great goals.

Maybe your new year resolution is to eat more fruit and vegetables instead of takeaway, or cut down on alcohol, or save money by eating out less often.  Or maybe you’ve decided to pack nuts and fruit to snack on at work instead of sneaking a couple of Tim Tams when the mid afternoon energy slump hits.  What about that exercise goal, to get up earlier and go to the gym 3 mornings a week or after work?  Or lose a couple of kilo due to all the food and alcohol you enjoyed in the lead up to Christmas so that you fit into the dress you bought for a friend’s wedding in a couple of months?

Remember that excited feeling as you’re planning your New Year’s resolutions? 

‘I can do this!  Bring it on!’

Yet even when the goal is something you actually enjoy and want to add to your week (as opposed to something you’re trying to give up), such as learning how to paint or start guitar lessons, it’s not always easy to keep the momentum going. You run out of time, or feel too tired, or it’s hard to get up earlier as the mornings get colder and darker …

It’s so common that we tend to just shrug and move on.  We set our goals with the best of intentions, but somehow it’s hard to sustain it.  

We’ve all done it – New Year’s resolutions that start off enthusiastically and go really well for a few weeks or a few months, … and then the old programming kicks back in and somewhere along the line, it grinds to a halt.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.  Again.

What’s happening here?  Well, it’s because the part of the mind we use to set New Year’s resolutions and goals with is the conscious mind. The conscious mind is important in working out what’s needed and weighing up the options and the pros and cons.  But the conscious mind relies on conscious effort and willpower.  It’s hard work creating new habits and breaking old ones using conscious effort and willpower alone.

It’s time to harness the superpower of the subconscious mind!  

The reason why it’s far more effective to use the subconscious mind to create new habits is because it works 40 times faster than the conscious mind.  The subconscious can be reprogrammed with positive beliefs that will help you turn those New Year resolutions into easy, habitual behaviours.

By using both the conscious and the subconscious mind, you’ll be working with yourself instead of against yourself, if you’re intending to:

• Get rid of self-sabotaging behaviours
• Improve your health 
• Maintain a healthy weight 
• Exercise regularly 
• Eating more healthily
• Start or stick with a new activity or hobby
• Have healthier relationships
• Reduce anxiety and stress

The most effective tool I know for shifting limiting subconscious beliefs that are getting in the way of you making positive changes in your life is Psych-K.  It was developed by Rob Williams, an American therapist in the 1980s as a way to help his clients stop self-sabotage and fast-track the shifts they needed. When I trained with Rob in 2005, he described his philosophy of Psych-K as being inspired by nature. He realised that you do a lot better by swimming with the power of the waves than pitting yourself against them, and that we need to work with ourselves instead of struggling against the negative limiting beliefs that we’ve picked up along the way. You can listen to Rob talk about this – click here.

In my experience, if you also add Mindfulness strategies so that the conscious and subconscious minds are working effectively together, then you get even faster results.

Nothing is a one size fits all, but at Vibrant Wellbeing I’ve found that using a combination of conscious mind strategies and subconscious mind tools definitely makes things happen more easily for my clients.

All the best with your New Year’s resolutions!