Tips for New Year’s Backsliders

Here are seven tips psychologist Donald Dossey has developed to help those who want to keep their New Year’s resolutions:

1. “Make sure that the intent (of the resolution) is clear; be sure that you really want to do it for yourself, and that the result will serve you, but will also benefit others, your loved ones, business associates.”

2. “Be specific and make it in a positive way.”

3. “Focus beyond your goal. That makes the goal only a stepping stone and easier to reach. I call it ‘future pacing.’ If you want to quit smoking, focus on how you will think and feel and be if you’re not smoking anymore. You’ll be breathing more easily, wake up with more energy and be more physically active.”

4. “Avoid overloading your goals. Keep them simple and don’t make too many at once. If you get too many going at once, you’ll be overloading yourself.”

5. “Take a risk and ignore the ‘facts,’ that people are programmed in this culture for a middle-of-the-road life. Try to go beyond the limited-belief system, and shoot for it. If anybody’s ever done it, so can you. If nobody has done it, you can. That helps excite the person, and helps in motivating your resolution.”

6. “Learn to use the ‘keying’ process to help you attain your goal.” (Keying is a simple self-curing technique Dossey uses to treat phobias and anxiety. A person focuses on a previous pleasant experience and then is directed to “squeeze his wrist or put the index finger and thumb together or wiggle a toe, something physical. Then later, if the person is becoming anxious, he can squeeze the wrist or do any other type of ‘key’ he has set up, and it will automatically trigger those pleasant thoughts to come back.”) Based on Pavlovian theory, he said, “the technique short-circuits the physiological desire and lets the person focus on the real outcome of the goal. What you think about, you feel.”

7. “Make your resolutions fun. If they’re not, they won’t work. It’s a refocusing technique. In changing your behavior, you have to substitute every habit with something as good as or better. If you want to quit smoking, imagine yourself having more fun without nicotine and that smoking pattern. Imagine yourself coming into a room and you don’t smell of smoke. Or imagine yourself feeling so fit, you’re out on the ski slopes having fun.”