Maintaining your new year resolutions

Written By Nik & Eva Speakman
Fireworks

Well, we’re officially halfway through January and according to New York Daily News, 22% of Americans said they’ve already cheated on their resolutions, and 50% of people didn’t even get started!

The most popular resolutions include weight loss, keeping fit, saving money and quitting smoking, drinking or eating chocolate and fatty foods.

So why do resolutions fail?

Three of the most common culprits for failing to make New Year’s resolutions are:-

  • Lack of preparation

  • Doing too much too soon

  • Quitting permanently if you hit a glitch

So, if you’re battling with sticking to your resolutions, or you’ve already quit then here’s some simple tips to getting you back on track.

Lack of preparation

Start afresh. Grab a notepad and write down your resolution at the top of the page. List everything you need to do to enable you to continue with your goal. Tell as many people as possible about your resolution as you’ll be more successful if you’re accountable to others. If you’re giving something up, choose an alternative to fill the void so you don’t feel you’re losing out on something.

Organise your diary as suggested below.

Doing too much too soon

If you have more than one resolution, decide to stagger your start date. Allow at least two weeks between the start of each so that you can make your new behaviour habitual. Use a diary to help you, diary what you need to do and on what day. So if you’re committing to get fit and go to the gym, decide on the days you’re going to go to the gym and write them as an appointment in your diary.

Quitting permanently if you hit a glitch

If you hit a glitch, take a break for a day or two, but write in your diary the day you’re going to start again and be sure to follow steps 1 and 2 above. Change your terminology and decide to have a New Month resolution as opposed to a New Year so you can start something new at the start of each month. Make a list of how your life will improve when you adopt your new resolution. Make a list of the people you’ll impress by sticking to your resolution.

Imagine yourself regularly, adopting and being praised for achieving your resolution.

Remember a new behaviour to improve your life can start any minute in any day.  It doesn’t have to be a New Year, a new week or new month! Good luck!

For further helpful resources, please take a look at our YouTube channel, TikTok profile, podcast, and books. You could also come and spend the day with us at one of our ‘Upgrade Your Life’ workshops. Be sure to drop an email to events@speakman.tv and they will let you know when and where our workshops are taking place.

 

Nik & Eva Speakman

We have studied and worked together since 1992. Between us we have studied human behaviour and psychology for seven decades. We both share an uncontainable passion to offer hope and to help people lead happier and less inhibited lives.

After many remarkable breakthroughs we created our own behavioural change therapy, ‘Schema Conditioning.’® Subsequent work with trauma victims and their related symptoms, led to the creation of two further trauma-based therapies.

‘Schema Conditioning Psychotherapy.’®

‘Visual Schema Displacement Therapy (VSDT)’®

‘Visual Schema Detachment & Restructuring (VSDR)’®

Qualifications from the creation of our therapies, resulted in training psychology professors, doctors and masters students at Universities in Amsterdam and Utrecht. In 2015, this training produced the two sets of scientific studies conducted into the workings of our therapy; the first two study papers highlighting the remarkable efficacy, was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry in June 2019. A further third study was then published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology in April 2021, with a fourth clinical study with hospital patients is currently underway and will be completed by the end of 2022.

In addition to members of the public, we work with, and have treated many high-profile clients and ‘A’ list clients around the world, having had prodigious successes. We are resident therapists on ITV’s multi award-winning ‘This Morning’ and have been for over a decade, we have also had own television shows, one of which, ‘The Speakmans’, also aired on ITV and several countries worldwide. Over the last two decades we have appeared on numerous other television shows as experts, such as the multi award-winning Saturday Night Takeaway.

Our mission is to illuminate that there is ALWAYS HOPE and that overcoming trauma and improving quality of life is entirely possible. Many people have either never been given hope, or worse had hope taken away from them, our aim is to correct that by sharing our message in any way we possibly can, including live workshops, theatre tours, books, podcasts, radio, television, social media and YouTube.

At the heart of all we do, is our relentless mission to offer HOPE to as many people as we possibly can.

https://nikandeva.com
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