Start Small: Why One New Year’s Resolution is Enough

: By Marie T. Russell, InnerSelf.com

Thanks for visiting InnerSelf.com, with 20,000+ life-altering articles promoting "New Attitudes and New Possibilities."

Image by Gerd Altmann

Start Small: Why One New Year’s Resolution is Enough

by Marie T. Russell, InnerSelf.com

It’s that time of year: The beginning of a new year which traditionally is seen as a new start, a time to wipe the slate clean of old unhealthy habits and instill new behaviors. Of course, there are other times of the year that offer this opportunity:

* your birthday (or if you’re more astrologically-minded, your solar return);

* the astrological new year (when the Sun enters the sign of Aries at the spring equinox in March);

* the Chinese new year (2^nd new moon after the winter solstice);

* the new moon each month.

These traditionally sympobilze a fresh start thus the energy of that day or that period helps give us a boost in our new resolution. For those in the Christian religion, you could choose Easter as another “fresh start”. (Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.)

Or you can pick the first day of each month. The idea is to pick a day (or days) that mean something for you and thus are empowered by your attitude and energy. A new year can be started at any time that you decide you want to a fresh start. The goal is to have it be something symbolic.

The Glitch with New Year’s Resolutions

Yet, as many of us know, New Year’s resolutions, while they may start out strong, can tend to wane as the month of January goes on. We start out all gung ho to change, and then, we start resisting, either consciously or unconsciously. We may “forget” to exercise or meditate for one day, or maybe that day we don’t feel like it, so we give ourselves permission to skip a day… or two. And then two stretches into three and more, and the first thing we know, we've “fallen off the wagon”.

And then the guilt and self-judgment and blame kick in, and we self-sabotage by feeling bad about our actions (or inactions) and we’ve started a vicious cycle of negative judgmental self-critical energy and the resolutions start to feel like burdens instead of goals.

Why Oh Why Can’t I Stick to My Resolutions?

So why does this happen? Are we lazy? Is our will weak? Don’t we want to change “enough”?

Here’s what Joseph Selbie shares in his book The Physics of Miraculous Healing:

“Surveys have shown that most people do not achieve any of their New Year’s resolutions because, in their enthusiasm, they take on too much change at once.”

So there’s our first answer: We take on too much at a time.

In the same way, if we are trying to recreate our life (or our habits) all at once, it just takes too much focus, too much energy, too much will power.

So what we discover is that it’s a bit like a daily to-do list that just has too many things on it to be handled in one day. A friend said to me, as he was rushing out to an appointment, “I have 12 things on my to-do list today, and only the time to do 4 of them.”

Don’t guilt yourself if you’ve taken on more than you can handle. Yes, you think you “should” be able to do it, but, we are still human and have so much going on at once inside of us and around us, that we need to be able to focus on one thing at a time.

Multi-tasking Anyone?

Research has shown that people don’t actually multi-task. In other words you actually don’t do more than one thing at once. What you do, or what your brain does, is switch quickly from one thing to another. So if you’re multitasking two things, the brain actually jumps from one to the other time after time, moment after moment, milli-second after milli-second. Whew!!! I feel tired and stressed just thinking about that.

Your brain cannot hold two thoughts at the same time. Only one thought at a time! So when you’re “multi-tasking” it is actually jumping back and forth, back and forth, from one topic or item... continuously. And we wonder why we’re tired...

So in the same way, forming new habits becomes stressful as we try to keep it all together to fit our new image of ourselves… all these new habits we’ve stacked on our list of New Year’s resolutions, one after the other. Exercise daily. Meditate twice a day. Eat healthy. Don’t eat sugar. Reduce coffee intake. Don’t fly off the handle at any small provocation. Get to work on time. Leave work on time. Start working on that new project. Make time each day to play with my children (or my inner child). The list can, and sometimes does, go on and on.

So Can’t You Make New Year’s Resolutions?

Part of the challenge of New Year’s resolutions, apart from the number of them, is the attitude or judgment we may have that we need a complete overhaul. We criticize and judge ourselves for our “lack of” or our failures or our “not good enoughness”. This in itself starts us off on a difficult note… anything we do from duress rather than joy will be more difficult to maintain.

So perhaps, the first step is to just pick ONE New Year’s resolution. And maybe not the hardest one. Baby steps! Pick one that you feel you can handle without too much stress. Once you’ve had a whole month – some say it takes 28 days to establish a new habit – to make the new habit a part of you, then you can choose a new habit or behavior you’d like to establish.

After a month, you can reevaluate and decide if you’ve mastered this change, and if you feel you have, you can choose another one. And if you haven’t mastered it, then you can give yourself another month to really anchor the new behavior or habit into your routine and your life. If it feels right and you feel ready, you can make the 1st of each month the start of a new habit or attitude.

This will remove a lot of the pressure of creating a whole “new you” starting January 1^st and running out of energy and determination as the month goes on and you find it’s just too many changes to handle at once. As we all know, there will be other challenges as the month goes on, so overloading ourselves right out of the starting gate makes it unlikely that we’ll reach our goals.

Don’t overburden yourself at the start of the year. Start with one step, one change that you’d like to implement. And don’t pick the hardest one. Pick one you feel confident you can accomplish. And once you’ve done so, that success will give you the impetus to take on another goal whether it’s the next month or at some other time.

There is enough stress in the world and in our lives without our intentionally adding to it. Be kind to yourself. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Don’t set yourself up for failure by trying to fit 40 hours in a 24 hour day.

Treat yourself lovingly, kindly, like someone you really really care about. And this gentle attitude will help you attain your goal of whichever New Year’s resolution (yes only one) that you select for this year, or at least for the first month. Take baby steps! No child has ever gotten up from the crawling stage and taken off at a run. They learn to crawl, then stand, then walk… and then later run. So when you start writing out your New Year’s Resolutions, remember… baby steps!

About The Author

Marie T. Russell is the founder of InnerSelf Magazine (founded 1985). She also produced and hosted a weekly South Florida radio broadcast, Inner Power, from 1992-1995 which focused on themes such as self-esteem, personal growth, and well-being. Her articles focus on transformation and reconnecting with our own inner source of joy and creativity.

Creative Commons 3.0: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License. Attribute the author: Marie T. Russell, InnerSelf.com. Link back to the article: This article originally appeared on InnerSelf.com

RELATED BOOK: The Physics of Miraculous Healing

The Physics of Miraculous Healing: How Emotion, Mind, and Spirit Enable Unlimited Self-Healing
by Joseph Selbie.

Our soul powers can be methodically used to develop resilient health and to increase our ability to self-heal from serious, even terminal, disease. In this book you will find many practical ways to awaken and strengthen positive emotion, increase your life force, develop health-creating beliefs, and make a transformative connection to Spirit. Practices and techniques include: meditation, deep relaxation, affirmation, energization, concentration, and more.

The Physics of Miraculous Healing is a companion to Selbie’s Amazon Best-Sellers, The Physics of God and Break Through the Limits of the Brain. These books are bridges of understanding between the modern evidenced-based discoveries of science and the timeless experience-based discoveries of the mystics.For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as a Kindle edition and as an Audiobook.

Article Recap:

New Year’s resolutions often fail due to overwhelming expectations and too many changes at once. Focusing on one manageable goal simplifies the process and sets a solid foundation for lasting success. By taking baby steps and mastering one habit at a time, you can build confidence and reduce stress. Starting small allows for sustainable growth and avoids the pitfalls of judgment and burnout. Treat yourself kindly and embrace resolutions that work for you.

break

Thanks for visiting InnerSelf.com, where there are 20,000+ life-altering articles promoting "New Attitudes and New Possibilities." All articles are translated into 30+ languages. Subscribe to InnerSelf Magazine, published weekly, and Marie T Russell's Daily Inspiration. InnerSelf Magazine has been published since 1985.