Resolutions
Here we are in the middle of January and perhaps those BIG resolutions you set on New Year’s Day have already diminished or are on their way out the door. Maybe not, an optimistic person may view it as a challenge to meet each day. Maybe the resolutions were hastily made or were a repeat of the last few years. Better sleep, work out more, eat less, yadda, yadda, yadda!!
Allow your yourself some grace and kindness, everyone’s heart and soul need it! It is commonly known most people will forego what they thought they would do, mostly physically.
Let’s take a brighter approach to the topic of resolutions. First, change the name! Same concept but different consonants and vowels. Positive words can change the brain if spoken frequently and gently.
In their jointly written book, Words Can Change Your Brain, Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, and Mark Robert Waldman, a communications expert state, “a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.”
I suggest choosing the word AIM, could serve as an acronym, always in mind. A person sets an AIM to walk 30 minutes a day, it should be always in mind to do so and if said enough, the walk may happen. Whatever the AIM would be, the person can hold that in their thoughts. With repetitive reminders the AIM will happen. The AIM will lead to successes. Say a person has the AIM of walking 30 minutes a day, within two weeks, the success will be clothes fitting better or loose. Or the AIM would be to turn off their phone at a determined time before bed and success will be better sleep within a few nights. The options are endless, the AIM should help the person to live a better life.
Everything takes time, time is precious and should be spent doing things we love with our family, friends, pets or whoever is important in our world.
Personally, I have found that if I write down my AIMS, that is more powerful! It is also approved by those who have done some research.
One of my studies, called "The Gender Gap and Goal-Setting," found that both men and women need to do a much better job of writing down their goals (although men did perform a bit better than women on this issue). Study participants were asked to rate the question “My goal is so vividly described in written form (including pictures, photos, drawings, etc.) that I could literally show it to other people and they would know exactly what I’m trying to achieve.” Mark Murphy is the CEO of Leadership IQ and the author of Hiring For Attitude.
He also stated external storage is placing the goal in a prominent area to be seen everyday is beneficial. It is a reminder and visual cue. The other aspect of writing is encoding, a biological process-having a much greater chance of being remembered.
Set the AIMS, repeat them, write them down, place the reminder in a prominent place (bathroom mirror, front door, you know the place you look at everyday!), do them and watch for results and successes.
Karen Mesler,
Founder of Alleluia Baskets
Ask me about me AIMs and how they were acquired