You have decided to change something in your life. You have a good intention and you have the motivation to change. But how do you keep these good intentions? Can you keep vague resolutions? How can you effectively change behavior to maintain your good intentions? How can good intentions be achievable?
Experts
Good advice is to delve deeper into the subject you would like to change. Get information about the subject to be changed from the experts, from the people who really understand the subject. It offers you great new insights that can certainly help you maintain your good intentions.
Advantage and disadvantage
The following advice can be of great value to help you maintain your good intentions. Make a list of the following:
- What are the benefits of your good intentions?
- What are the disadvantages of your good intentions?
- What are the benefits of NOT keeping your New Year’s resolutions?
- What are the disadvantages of NOT keeping your New Year’s resolutions?
Keep this list with you every day. As soon as you have a difficult moment and are having trouble persevering: read through the list.
Radical changes
Do radical changes work? Can your behavior change so radically? It is much better to implement behavioral changes that are achievable. Effective, but feasible. Keep this in mind if you have a good intention for yourself. But how do you know if behavior will be effective?
Goal
What goal are you pursuing? What good intention do you want to keep? What changes need to take place to achieve your goal? Behavior is only effective if you are convinced that it will help you achieve your goal, if you are sure that it will help you change.
Feasible
How do you know when behavioral changes are feasible? If you know you are good at it!
Vague intentions
Do vague intentions work? Vague intentions don’t really work, why? Because they are too vague, such as: I’m going to do better. What are you going to do better at? When are you going to try harder? The vaguer the intention, the smaller the chance of any positive result.
Don’t do it again
Telling yourself things you don’t want to do anymore won’t help you. For example, say to yourself: I don’t want to smoke anymore. As soon as you say that to yourself, you create an image in your mind about smoking, all you can think about is smoking. Difficult if you want to stop! So delete from your list of good intentions everything that says: I don’t want to do anything anymore
Advice from others
Changing based on the advice of others does not help. Changing based on the advice of others doesn’t work. You have to do it, not the other person. It is your life and your responsibility, not anyone else’s. If the other person indicates that it is better for us to change, the other person may be right, but since you are the one who has to change and undergo the change process, that does not work for us!
Visualize
What else helps you maintain your own good intentions? By letting the resolutions play in your head like a movie, by visualizing the resolutions. Pay close attention during this film and visualization: What are you doing and is it good what you are doing? Write down this film and visualization. You can also keep this with you every day and as soon as you find it difficult to keep up, you can read your own film again.
This article is part of the special: Difficult to maintain a diet?