53 - DO YOU HAVE A HARD TIME KEEPING YOUR NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS? THIS EPISODE CAN HELP

Are you ready for the New Year? Do you have New Year resolutions? Let's talk about why so many people fail on keeping their New Year resolutions. Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darca, author, psychology, psychologist, and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Let's talk about why people have a hard time to keep their holiday New Year resolutions. In fact, studies show 80% of people actually fail to follow that. Well, that's quite shocking because whoever you talk to, they will tell you they have written down and they've talked about having these amazing New Year resolutions and how excited they are. And this year for sure, they're going to keep. And yet only 20% of the population keeps those goals. So let's talk about what to do, what not to do, and why some of these things fail. Okay, so here's one of the suggestions that I want to come up with. In fact, that's my first one. Don't make resolutions just because it's a new year. It really becomes sort of a cliche, like a date, okay, January 1st. All of a sudden I'm going to be a different person. That's not as realistic as we think. So it's actually. Studies also show that people are keeping their promises much more if it's not related to specific dates, which is kind of a social pressure, right? So if you want to keep promises to yourself, maybe write down goals and make the goals way ahead of time or even after the New Year's, but don't necessarily tie it into a specific date just because it's a social expectation. Another problem that is very well known, it's actually that a lot of people make goals that are not tangible and that are not really well planned out. So it's something like, okay, I'm gonna lose weight. This is my goal for this year, and that's it. It's not written down. It's not really planned out. It doesn't have specific action steps of like, well, what kind of diet? And how much weight do you mean? And. And is it really necessary? You know, so the more tangible you are, the more you can plan, the better the outcome is. So, by the way, it's also important to write them down because I notice a lot of people just sort of say the goals, but it's not written down. Something about writing it, publishing it for your own eyes, or maybe even for the eyes of your family. Whoever lives with you makes it easier to follow the goals. So my suggestion is you actually create almost like a little calendar. So let's take the Example of you want to exercise more and be healthier in the upcoming year. So you create a calendar. Write January 1st, let's say you are sticking to the date and write the whole month and then put it in the week, how many times a week you're going to exercise and what days. So, so maybe you can say Monday at 8am 30 minutes of Pilates, Wednesday at 10am, 45 minutes of walk, Friday, whatever. So write it down. You see, so when you have it in front of you as a calendar, then not only you're seeing what you have to do, but then when you do it, you do a little check mark. So okay, here comes Monday, 8:15. You try to follow the schedule that you put because if you say to, to yourself, I see that I have something that I plan for 8 o', clock, but I don't feel like it right now, I'll probably do it this evening at 5 o'. Clock, chances are you are not going to do it. So that is one way that you are able to follow your goal is when you have a specific hour, tangible action. And then when you do it, you do a little check mark. So let's say you are able to follow everything on the week. One check mark, another one, another one. And then when you see, see that because you're seeing your progress, not only feel it in your body, but you visually see it on the board, it motivates you to go for the second week and just imagine the satisfaction that you're going to feel at the end of the month when you see all the check marks below your commitments. Well, let's assume you couldn't do some of those days because you had really legitimate reasons, of course, but don't beat yourself up. But the next day, don't make it worse by thinking, okay, well since I failed yesterday, I might as well give up today. So just take every day as a new day and pick up again and just work on it. And of course, if you beat yourself up also, you are more likely to be really discouraged. And discouragement also shows that it's a really. It's sort of the enemy of the motivation. Commit to what's reasonable. What's reasonable means you do not write 100 goals. Okay, I'm coming into New Year, I'm going to lose weight, get exercise, sleep better, quit smoking, find more time with friends. I don't know, the list goes on and on, right? Maybe you have 10 items and you're trying to plug in everything on that month on the calendar that I mentioned. And guess What? Again, the more goals you set, the less chance you have for actually following through. Because all of a sudden it's too much. We as human beings are creatures of habit, so we don't expect to all of a sudden be just someone completely different, right? So just stick to just maybe one or two goals. And then in fact, here's even a better decision. Do one goal at a time, do it for 30 days. At the end of the 30 days, then add a second goal, do another 30 days and add another second goal. Because each time you are able to accomplish a goal and you see those little marks on your calendar, you're going to now start telling yourself, oh, I'm a person who can keep promises, I'm a person who can actually accomplish goals. And that's going to motivate you because the way you talk to yourself and the way that you have approved tangibly in your hand right in your calendar is going to motivate you further. If you fail on 10 of the items, chances are you're not going to do it for another year because you're going to tell yourself, you see, you fail at everything you try, you're not good at nothing, and you've never been able to keep your commitments. And again, the list goes on and on about the negative beliefs. So find another person who you could be accountable with or accountable to. Sort of like a resolutions buddy that could be anyone that you choose. But come up with a plan together. It really is much more effective when you have someone that you are comparing notes with or you're doing maybe five minutes. Check in every day, send a little text, hey, this morning, were you able to accomplish your goal? Yes or no, words of encouragement. It really, really, really goes a long way to have someone next to you. Then let's talk about after all this thing that we put in place. Let's assume you are still not able to follow your, you know, your goals and then maybe it's not time to explore the reasons. What really is in your way? Is it just as simple as oh, I forgot or I'm lazy, or is there actually some form of childhood conditioning or trauma that gets in your way? I wanted to give you some examples. I have a couple of clients that really focused on that and we were able to find the childhood traumas that were actually in your way. So this client of mine, let's call her Elizabeth, she's in her 60s, every time she starts making money, she all of a sudden goes into sort of this fear and does something to self sabotage it. And Next thing you know, she's actually not really able to complete her work. She's a very actually successful and smart person, but something was in her way. So as we started digging, we came to understand that when she was little, her family forced her to share some of her weekend works and stuff like that. The money with her family where she couldn't even keep anything to herself. And if not, she would be physically abused by her father. So even though her father has passed now, she, her body and the unconscious mind because of the trauma, was so stuck in this fear that every time she'd make money, this fear would come in and say, oh, you're going to get abused. You have to share this money. You can't make this much money. You're making more money than your dad and that's dangerous. So again, this was not something as an adult she was thinking about, but it was really a trauma reaction. So when we worked on that, she started really able to stop her self sabotaging behaviors that she was doing. So watch out for yours. Do you have a low self esteem? Something that says you're not worth success? Are you worried about making other people feel less than you? Maybe just in general feeling like this can't be true, it's too good to be true, or just sort of happiness creating some fears or anything unfamiliar even can create fear. So these things will be important for you to work ideally with a therapist or you can journal them as well. But getting support about this topic would be much more helpful and another one is writing down your successes. So after you finish this calendar and you did it, maybe just sort of journal, praise yourself, share your success with other people and just really get a good success sense of how it feels to be able to accomplish your goals and being able to say that you accomplished, you know what you put your mind to. And again this will increase improve your self esteem and make you feel much more motivated for that. If one of your new year resolution is to actually have therapy and improve your self esteem or deal with your emotions that you haven't felt the capacity to deal with before. I want to let you guys know the news of our new clinic that's opened couple of weeks ago. We have really affordable care for trauma treatment, for mental health treatment, with amazing therapists that really work with the body and really will teach you great tools to be able to help you to deal with your emotions and heal your past traumas so that you can actually be more successful and achieve all your goals. We're looking forward to helping you. Please contact us. Our information is below. And remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.