00:00 

Well hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this is episode number 133, "How to Accomplish Your New Year's Resolutions." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:24 

Well hello there, my friends, how you doing? This is your life coach, Tanya, here. I'm very honored to be your life coach. I'm so grateful that you join me here every week to learn a little bit more about how you can move into a better space and what you can do. I hope that when you are ready to fast forward your growth and dig deeper into yourself and really see what's going on and make lasting change, I hope that you will call me, that you will set up an appointment and that we can chat and we can get you moving in the direction you want to go at a pace that you really want to work. All of this information that I give you is fabulous and I don't hold back. I share with you all the stuff that I share with my clients, but when you work with me, we work a little bit faster because I can help you see things that are very difficult for you to see yourself. 

01:20 

Okay so that being said, let's jump in today to episode number 133, "How to Accomplish Your New Year's Resolutions." Okay, so it is that time of year, right? There's something about the new year that gets us all invigorated and ready for a fresh start. It's one of those times in our lives that feels like a reset: the perfect opportunity for a do-over. The perfect place for a mindset change. And so many people get on board with change at the new year. I was cracking up when I was shopping at Costco a few days ago because they had moved a whole section of clothing around so they could make room for all the exercise equipment and the protein drinks and bars and the vitamin supplements and the organizing materials. And I think it's great. I love that as a whole, people have a desire to grow, to progress, to become better versions of themselves. This is such a testament to me of the indomitable spirit of humans. Innately, we crave progression. We inherently know that growth is what it's all about here on earth. And growth just feels like such a part of our purpose in life. So whatever gets us out of the comfort zone and moving and desiring to get into a better place is a good thing. 

02:41 

So welcome to the new year. Thanks for bringing this out in us. Here's the trick, however: I believe that most of us have fallen prey to the New Year's Resolution that starts off really strong and then slowly tapers off until about mid-February, if not earlier. Our goal has become a forgotten part of our past and then it could even become something to beat ourselves down with. I know for several years I decided to just never set New Year's resolutions because I wanted to be focused on progression year-round and not just at the new year, but I since decided that I actually love that there is a built-in time to evaluate what has happened in the past and look at where I want to go and what I want to accomplish in the future. So though I still love to focus on setting goals when the timing is right, regardless of the month of the year, I also love the self reflection and assessment of the previous year. I love taking the time to review my successes and my failures and see how much I've grown in the previous year. 

03:50 

If you haven't done a process like that yet this year, I actually have a really great end-of-year review on my "weekend win" email that comes out on Fridays. If you haven't gotten one yet, I'll keep a link to it on my email for another week or two and then it will be gone until next year. So you can sign up for that email at tanyahale.com, if you're interested in that. I know that as I have reflected on 2020, I have loved to see how much growth I've experienced this last year. I honestly feel like such a different person than I was a year ago. I'm seeing the world differently, I'm interacting with people at a different level, and I've become a much better coach because of how much I've been able to coach people this year. I've also taken an honest look at how I've fallen short of the person I wanted to be this last year. I've seen progress that I wanted to make sitting stagnant and I've experienced stinted growth in areas of my life that I was hoping to be further along in. 

04:47 

So when I really took the time to be honest about my successes and my failures, I could see patterns that I love and patterns that I don't love so much. After a good evaluation, much more clearly the path I've been on and how I want to adjust it this next year. I'm hoping that you have taken the time to do your own honest reflection of this last year, because only when we  really take a look at where we honestly are can we understand where we need to go and what adjustments we need to make to move closer to get there. 

05:22 

The first thing I'd like to offer is that if you have done some kind of evaluation, please choose to be compassionate with yourself. If you're a human, most likely you are not where you want to be or where you were hoping you would be a year ago. Falling short is just part of the process. Giving yourself space to be human and to not be perfect is such an important part of moving forward with becoming the person we'd like to become. So if you have a tendency to be hard on yourself, as I often do, back off. Be compassionate and be grateful for the progress that you did make last year. Take time to recognize and celebrate your successes and then also make note of your failures. But don't beat yourself down because of them. 

06:11 

One of the best things we can do is to just get curious about why we did or didn't accomplish what we had wanted. One of the things I love most about deeply and honestly reviewing my previous year is that when I'm done, I feel like I have such a clear understanding of how I want to move forward in the new year. And then I can set my sights on moving in that direction. I think very often we get caught in the trap of setting goals just because it's the new year and we think we should be doing something so that we don't feel like a slug. And this is even bigger. Sometimes we set goals because we think we should based on social expectations rather than goals that come from the real us. 

06:57 

Okay, so if you've been with me for very long, you know that the word "should" is one I am working to strike from my own vocabulary. "Should" just creates too much guilt, too much anxiety and stress. And it's not decisive. It does not help us get where we want to go. It leaves us in a place of limbo, a place between making the decision but knowing that we're not. Wanting to make the decision but for some unknown reason choosing not to. So step out of the "should" and just state things as they are: plain facts. I did do this, I did this, I did not do this. And then let go of the judgment about it. Judging ourselves doesn't do anything productive for us. Observe what you did and didn't do from a very neutral place. 

07:48 

So here's the second thing I would like to offer. Please get very clear on what you are seeking to accomplish and why. Dig deep into the "why" because this will make a huge difference on whether you actually accomplish your goals or not. So here's an example. So many people will set a goal every year to lose weight or to get in better physical shape and we're going to throughout the rest of this podcast use this goal, use this as an example okay. Although anything you choose you could put in place of this one. So let's look first at the reasons for this goal. We need to examine our "why" before we can know whether it's a worthwhile goal or not. 

08:31 

So let's say you set a goal to lose 50 pounds by the end of June. The first question we will want to ask ourselves is why we want to lose 50 pounds. So often we don't really know our "why" and this is where some self-honesty is so important. We need to be really clear, as in crystal clear, about what our "why" is. It can be so easy to fudge the truth with ourselves, but dig deep, deep, my friend. Break out the honest to goodness truth so that you can take a look at it. A really great way to do this is to do a thought download. So just sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and start writing all the reasons you want to accomplish this goal. And here's the key: do not edit as you go along. Don't edit your thoughts. If it comes to your mind, write it down. If it makes you sound selfish, write it down. If it makes you feel shallow, write it down. If it makes you sound prideful, write it down. If it makes you sound very un-Christlike, write it down. Every little thought. Get it out of your brain and onto some paper so you can look at it objectively. You can burn it later if you want. But we do not know what we need to adjust if we don't even see it. If we keep lying to ourselves about our "why," we are creating a very easy space to either beat ourselves down or to lose self-respect. We may not like what is coming out of our brain, but we can't work with it unless we see it. So be honest with yourself and get it onto the paper. This is like a few weeks ago when we talked about engaging with our darkness, right? That's the same concept. We have to take all those thoughts and get them out. 

10:23 

So here's just a few reasons with this goal of losing weight that may come to your mind. One, we think it's something that will make us happier. Two, we're trying to prove to someone else or to ourselves that we're worthy, that we're a good enough person. We think it will make us better than someone else. Four, we think we will fit in better. Five, we may even believe that it will make us more lovable. So some of those are socially motivated. Some of those are insecurity motivated. Right? So these are some of the reasons that have and do come up for me. Right? All of those examples are in this "may not  be the best reason" why category. And let's talk about why. Let's take a look at each of those again. 

11:15 

So number one: we think it is something that will make us happier. I want to offer that losing weight will not make you happier. Nothing outside of yourself will ever make you happier. Happiness is created by our thoughts and how they make us feel about ourselves. So regardless of whether it's losing weight or anything else, that will not make us happier. 

11:38 

Okay, two: we're trying to prove to someone else or to ourselves that we are worthy or that we're good enough. This is where we get caught up in the false idea that our works impact our worth. This is never the case. Our worth does not fluctuate regardless of what we do or don't do. We always have been, and always will be, 100% worthy. 

12:01 

The third example I gave you: we think it will make us better than someone else. It is so easy as humans to compare ourselves to others. But like the previous thought, everyone's worth is exactly the same. There can be no comparison. Nothing we can do will make us better than another person. And if we start trying to put everybody on a ladder with people below us, there will always be people above us as well. It's a no-win situation. 

12:28 

Number four: we think we will fit in better. Here's the deal, my friends: we will never fit in until we believe that we fit in. What makes us fit in is our thoughts. Fitting in has nothing to do with anyone else accepting us and everything to do with us accepting ourselves. 

12:49 

The fifth example I gave you: we believe that it will make us more lovable. Okay, my friends, we are 100% lovable just as we are. If someone else doesn't love us, that is a product of their thoughts and it has nothing to do with us. And we're fooling ourselves if we think that we can control whether or not someone else loves us. 

13:13 

So I want to offer here that all of these reasons we just discussed are very fear-based. Fear of not being happy, fear of not being worthy or good enough or part of the group or lovable. And though fear can sometimes get us off of our butts and get us moving, it never has enough power behind it to motivate us long-term. And that is why so many of the goals, or the resolutions that we set, fall off within a few short weeks because they are fear-based. Okay, this is why when we set goals based on reasons like those mentioned above, that we might make it two, three, five, six weeks before we give up because a fear-based motive gets exhausting. It depletes our energy because we have to white-knuckle all of our actions. We can only keep that up for so long. 

14:06 

But while you're doing that thought download, you're also going to have some thoughts that tap into genuine love-based reasons. So some of these may sound like this: "I love myself and I want to take better care of my body." Or maybe "I want to experience life in a healthier body. I want to increase my energy so I can spend more quality time with the people I love." Or maybe even "I just want to feel better. I just I want to feel not so sluggish and bloated all the time." So these reasons tap into a more genuine desire to do something for us, completely independent of other people. If with our goal we are seeking to people-please or control the thoughts and feelings of someone else, chances that we will peter out on our goal are pretty darn high, okay? If we're seeking to move into a better version of ourselves because we want to improve the quality of our life, we want to have a different experience than what we're currently having, and we're doing it out of love for us, then we will have a lot more tenacity in accomplishing our goal. These reasons will create energy rather than deplete it. So do the thought download, be brutally honest with yourself of why you want to accomplish each goal you've set, and realize that if your reasons are fear-based, you're setting yourself up for failure. If your reasons are love-based, your chances for success are much higher, okay? 

15:36 

So with that, you're probably gonna have fear-based thoughts and love-based thoughts. That's just a piece of how our brain works and how we are as people, as humans, right? And so what we want to do is start living and thinking and believing the more love-based thoughts on a more regular basis than the fear-based thoughts. When we have a fear-based thought, we just all of a sudden say, "nope, I'm not gonna believe that anymore. I want to believe..." and then we insert the new thought,  or "This is what I actually believe..." and then we insert the new thought. So retraining our brain to go from the old path to the new path, right? 

16:20 

So once you've cleaned up your reasons for the goals you want to accomplish, once you're clear on what thoughts you want to start thinking instead of the fear-based thoughts, it's time to take those love-based thoughts and implement them into your daily process. And this is not a hard thing to do necessarily, but your brain may give you some pushback, and this is why. Your primitive brain is geared to do three things for you, and we call this the motivational triad. Your brain wants to, one, conserve energy. Two, it wants to avoid pain. And three, it wants to increase our pleasure. So when we're moving to incorporate new thoughts and behaviors into our life, we are using our prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of our brain. Okay, the primitive part of our brain doesn't create a future for us. It doesn't create new thoughts. It doesn't solve those kinds of problems, right? We're using the prefrontal cortex when we start thinking about setting new goals, okay? But in the background, in the primitive brain subconsciously, it is trying to protect us and keep us alive by resisting anything that pushes against the triad. 

17:32 

Here's an example of what it will do with these three things. So number one, we've talked about how it wants to conserve energy. This means it will always push us toward the path of least resistance. If we are trying to limit our food intake or eat more healthy foods, That takes a lot more energy than if we just eat what we've always eaten in the amounts we've always eaten them and when we want to eat them. 

17:55 

So we'll get some pushback and our primitive brain will put forth thoughts like, "oh, it's just not worth it right now." Or "just this one treat won't matter," things like that. You've probably had similar thoughts. It takes energy to feel the urge and not respond to it or to redirect our thoughts to something more productive. And our primitive brain just wants what's easy and doesn't take energy. Okay, so that's number one. 

18:23 

The second part of the motivational triad, our primitive brain wants to avoid pain. Saying "no" to a treat or a food that we really enjoy can feel painful. Having to sit through an urge to eat something that we know won't get us to our goal can feel uncomfortable, even painful. So our primitive brain will offer us thoughts that won't ultimately service. Thoughts like, "oh, this is just too hard." These kinds of thoughts are our brain trying not to feel the discomfort to avoid the pain. And our primitive brain may also interpret the physical discomfort caused by our thoughts, right? That we want this food. It may interpret it as actual pain. So it amps up the thoughts to let us know how painful it is and so our brain, the brain chatter, gets louder and louder, okay? 

19:16 

And the third in the motivational triad, it wants to increase our pleasure. The short-term dopamine hit that we get when we engage in a pleasurable experience, like eating a food that we love, is something that our body and our primitive brain really like. We can actually develop an addiction type response to dopamine. Dopamine is a hormone that our body releases when we do something or experience something or eat something that feels good. So when we're trying to do something like cut out sugar, our primitive brain will push us to really want the pleasure that would come from the dopamine hit when we eat sugar. It will keep saying "oh, let's just eat it. It will feel so good. It will feel so good." Fascinating stuff! 

20:02 

This is where it can be so important to be onto our brains, to be aware of what's going on, realizing that we have the two parts of our brains and that they are very often in conflict with each other. That's why we have this discussion going off on in our head so often where we'll be saying "I want it but I shouldn't do it. Oh but it sounds so good, but I said I wasn't going to...but just this once will be okay. But I decided not to!" until most often our primitive brain wins out because it's relentless in trying to get what it wants. Anybody else have this experience? It's not just me, right? Our primitive brain is always pushing for what is easy and pleasurable and our prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of our brain, is pushing for things that will require more effort and energy up front, but it will eventually create the future that we've created in our imagination. 

20:59 

So learning to be onto our brain is a very important part here. Expect to have this conversation going on in your head and decide ahead of time how you're going to manage the discomfort of your primitive brain pushing back against your  prefrontal cortex. It's important to plan in advance how you want to think when certain situations come up. So look ahead and think about what obstacles are going to keep you from obtaining your goal. Write those down. Then here's the trick with thought work I help you engage in as opposed to just action work. Decide what you want to think when these obstacles present themselves. In so much progress work or goal work it will be presented to avoid the obstacles as much as possible. But here's the thing with this: the energy required to avoid the obstacle is a large amount of energy, and it doesn't change behaviors long term. 

21:57 

So let's say again you're wanting to eat healthier and feel better. So an obstacle for you may be that bag of chips in your pantry. Conventional white-knuckle goal setting would say to go through your pantry and throw away anything that will tempt you. Throw away those chips. This can be really hard, however, when the rest of your family still wants to eat those chips and they want chips around. So rather than tossing the chips, which is a short term solution, fear-based, fear that I can't control myself around those chips...learning to manage your thoughts around the bag of chips is a more long lasting plan. Because if we don't manage to change our thoughts about the bag of chips, the brain will continue to think the thoughts that eventually lead to eating them. Then when a bag of chips is in front of us at a party, we will still want the chips. It's so important to learn to manage our thoughts around the chips and not just remove them from our line of vision. Our goal here is to change our thinking about the chips so that we're no longer severely enticed by them. 

23:05 

So this leads us to the wrap up thought here that pulls this all together. All change has to come from the inside first, our brain, not the outside. In the above example, removing the bag of chips is doing something externally to create change. But this never works long term. It will work short term, not long term. The reason it doesn't work is because all behaviors are motivated by feeling. Eating the chips is motivated by an urge, and all feelings are created by our thoughts. So that urge is created by the thought of, "oh I love chips, that sounds so good." Okay, when we're having the same thought about the chips, it will eventually create the same behavior as it always did. Because as we've talked about before, we can white knuckle any behavior for a short time, maybe several weeks or even months, but eventually we will be exhausted from hanging on and we will break. When we learn to manage our thoughts first, then our feelings and our behaviors will align. There is such a difference between thinking, "I love chips and I really, really miss eating them, but I'm not going to," and thinking, "I just feel so much better when I'm not eating chips." If there's a bag of chips in front of us, and there probably will be at some point, the first thought will move us toward giving in and eating them. While the second thought that says, "I just feel so much better when I'm not eating chips," puts our prefrontal cortex in charge and manages our feelings and behaviors toward those chips. So much easier to walk away because we're believing in our brain, "I don't want them. I just feel better when I'm not eating them." 

24:54 

So, how do you accomplish your New Year's resolutions? Let's review those things we talked about. So one, once you've evaluated where you are and where you want to go, be very, very compassionate with yourself about where you currently are. Beating yourself down will never motivate you to move forward. Two, get very clear on the "why" of your goal. Be brutally honest with yourself about your reasons and move into a space of having your why be love-based rather than fear based. Pull out those love-based thoughts and focus on incorporating those into your regular thoughts. Three, pay very close attention to your brain and your thoughts around your goal and learn to manage them in a way that will move you toward long-term progress and success, rather than just white-knuckled, short-term success. I like to imagine in my brain when I have this back and forth conversation going on, I imagine both parts of my brain being like people pushing against each other. And who do I want to stand behind and help push? What do I want to accomplish? 

26:06 

So my friends, if you need help with learning to identify your thoughts and to manage your brain, in accomplishing these resolutions, in doing what you want, this is what I am specifically trained to do. I help you identify thoughts that are holding you back that are going to keep you from accomplishing your goals, and then I assist you in creating thoughts that will move you forward into success. The example we focused on today was food and eating better, but this same process applies to any goal you set for yourself. So with any area of your life you want to improve, mind work, this thought work, is the foundation. Do you want a better relationship with your spouse or your children? Mind work is the solution. Do you want a better relationship with your work? Mind work is the solution. Do you want a better relationship with yourself? Mind work is the solution. 

26:59 

If this seems tough for you, overwhelming for you, like "I just can't figure it out on my own" or "it's just a lot of work and I don't know where to start," get in touch with me. Let's talk about coaching and how it can help you move into the space you desire. It is an investment in time, money, and effort. But if you are willing to make the investment, you can move your life where you want to go. My goal as your coach is to give you the tools to help you implement these processes into your daily life on a regular basis, to help teach you how to do it better on your own. And mind management really is the key to accomplishing any goal you desire in your life. Believe that 100%. And I'm just going to end this podcast with this. I love growing up. This middle age growing up thing is so terrific and learning these skills and moving into a better version of myself in a way that is not possible when I was younger. And I hope that you're finding the same thing for your life. Hey, my friends, go to tanyahale.com if you would like to set up that free consult with me. Let's talk about what you want to accomplish. Let's talk about how to get it. Let's talk about how working together we can move you to this space. I know I can help you get there. And if you want it, it's totally available to you. And I can help teach you the skills to get you there. 

28:33 

Okay, if you feel this podcast is helping you, please share it with somebody that you know would love it. Please leave me a review. And if you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and do so. And then you will always have my next podcast available for you. I put them out every Monday morning, and so they're always, first thing, starting off your week, you've got a great podcast to help you move forward into a better space. Okay, that's gonna do it for me, my friends. I love you. I really love you. Thank you for being here, and thank you for helping me to create something that I love so much. I wish you all the best this week, and I will see you next week. Bye. 

29:22 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!