Yes! We’re just about at the middle of the month of January. That’s right; we’re a couple of weeks into the New Year.

How are you doing on those resolutions? If you made them, you’re a part of 45% of Americans who usually do so. If not, you fall among the 38% of Americans who never do. And another 17% make them but on an infrequent basis.

Even more telling is that by the second week into the year, 71% maintain them while 49% of have some success. By the end of the year, only about 8% are successful in achieving them. That’s a big drop!

I thought I’d offer a few insights to help you make it into the success categories.

1. Set goals. People who explicitly make New Year’s resolutions are 10 times more likely to achieve them than those who don’t. What are some things you need to accomplish right now? Setting goals will get you there. The people who are successful at reaching their goals make them small, set them on daily basis and continually monitor their progress.

2. Talk to yourself. That’s right. Talking to yourself is fine, just know what to say. Positive self-talk does indeed make a difference. Brain researchers have found that we say from 300 to 1000 words to ourselves each minute. Positive words mean positive results.

3. Walk in the state of your wishes fulfilled. One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Neville Goddard, continually talks about how powerful our imagination is. He instructs us to go within, see the things we wish to happen and then begin constructing scenarios in your head as if it has already happened. Don’t try to make it happen but bask in the glow of it having already been done.

4. Keep your eyes on the prize. In one of my recent Sunday messages I talked about vision research in which a group of people were taught to focus their gaze narrowly on a finish line that had been placed at the end of a route. They ignored everything else and imagined that a spotlight was cast onto the destination. Another group was told to regard things around the finish line as they would normally would. The group who focused outperformed the other group in a number of measures. This has application for your fitness goals but also other kinds of goals.

5. Center down. The renown mystic, Howard Thurman, proclaimed, “how good it is to center down”. He was emphasizing the importance of spending quiet time in meditation, reflection and prayer. As we do this we connect to the deeper part of ourselves and experience communion with God. We can also use reminders throughout the day. I have an app on my phone that’s called Mindfulness Bell and it very softly rings at a random time each hour (I set mine to be active from 9AM to 9PM). It reminds me to pause and bring myself into the present moment. Centering down also provides spiritual insight and resources that make achieving our resolutions possible.

New Every Moment,
John