7 Step To Make Resolutions Stick

Guest post by Dr. Joe Dispenza, Leading Brain/Change Expert and International Bestselling Author of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

In Part 1 of Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work, you learned that you can physiologically prepare yourself for achieving your goals by envisioning the reality you want to achieve. It’s a neuroscience principle called neuroplasticity.

Now for the steps that will help you achieve your small business goals in the new year:

Step 1 – Intention

Write a clear and simple resolution statement. This tells your brain that you mean it. Instead of saying you want to stop working 70 hours a week, say, “I will prioritize and delegate so that I can run my business instead of doing my business.”

Step 2 – Sponsoring Thoughts

Why do you want to change? Having strong reasons and passion for your “why,” is the biggest secret to making change stick. For example, why do you want to make more money in your business? Is it to send your children to private school? Do you want more money so you can hire the staff you need, so you can take a month-long vacation? Your sponsoring thoughts are the fuel to get you going each day in the right direction.

Step 3 – Review, Remind & Prime

To get yourself in the right state of mind, review the behaviors you want to exemplify. Do this when you wake up in the morning and/or before you go to bed in the evening. This little exercise literally sets up your day so that you stay conscious of your change.

If you imagine yourself making the necessary decisions for that day, you will begin to prime your brain to automatically follow your intentions. Your mental rehearsal can install the neurological hardware and software so that you have the circuits in place to use when executing your changes appropriately.

Step 4 – Align Your Behavior to Match Your Intention

The hardest part of breaking a habit? Not making the same choices you made days, weeks or months prior. The biggest reason most people fall short of their vision relates to giving into familiar feelings. When those feelings, cravings and bad habits come up during your day, remember, you have the will to conquer them.

Step 5 – Create a Reward System

Develop a reward system for yourself. Create a chart, review it and check off your wins daily. This is what makes your behavioral changes a new habit. The reward system will also build a new feeling of self esteem, worth and belief. If you fall from grace one day, make the choice to get back into your routine the very next day without wallowing in failure, guilt and self-depreciation.

Step 6 – Come Out Of Your Resting State: Change Your Energy

Change can be uncomfortable. When we are in the midst of change, it feels unnatural, unfamiliar and uncertain because we are no longer ‘being’ the same person. You are in the unknown. Therefore, each day you must elevate yourself into a new state and raise your energy. Questions like: “How would I have to ‘be” today to master the pile of paper on my desk?” “How would I have to ‘be’ today to make my sales calls?” And more importantly, answer this question: “How would I feel in my future when I am this person?” I like to tell myself, “I cannot get up today as the same person who sat down, I must be in a new state of being and live from this level of energy.”

Step 7 – Cue Your Environment

Create an environment that supports the change you want to make. Place pictures, quotes, dreams boards where you can see them daily. Play motivational MP3s while you’re exercising or driving. How does this help? It keeps you on track by reminding you that what you are doing is important. The more you stay conscious of your future, the more inspired you will be to overcome your present reality.

These are but a few starter steps. There is much more that can be done to ensure that you can Make Change Stick. But simply know that it is possible to change. True transformation is possible—and it is possible for YOU!

Dr. Joe Dispenza is known as one the world’s most prominent brain/change experts and author of the international bestselling books Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One, and Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind. He was also one of the featured researchers in What the BLEEP Do We Know!? Dr. Dispenza will be leading the Making Change Stick workshop Saturday January 19 in Vancouver with step-by-step guidance and meditation techniques, which will also be streamed to venues across North America and with local facilitators present to help people anchor the concepts. It will also be streamed online. For more information on Dr. Dispenza, his events and his books, go to www.drjoedispenza.com.