Certified Empowerment Life Coach

Make Your Resolutions Bear Fruit in the New Year

by Maarten Reilingh, Ph.D. — Certified Empowerment Life Coach

In the previous article, I told you that New Year's Resolutions were mental seeds that could blossom for you in the New Year. Like all seeds, your resolutions will need tending in order to flourish. Here are three guidelines that will help you care for your garden of resolutions.

• Create a strong mental image that energizes your resolution. This is the fertilizer for your mental seed. Remember that everything that happens in human affairs begins with the thought that these things are possible. The resolution is words, the image is a visualization — a picture — but both are thoughts and one reinforces the other. In fact, before you resolved to buy a new house or revitalize a relationship, for examples, you might have started out by imagining what they might look like. Whether you did so or not, do so now. Go to your mind's eye and see that house you wish to find in as much detail as possible. What is its style? Its condition? How many rooms does it have? What views can you see from it? Go to your mind's eye and see you and your spouse or friend holding hands, talking openly, honestly, and lovingly, enjoying a sunset together. To successfully reinforce your resolution, your visualization should have the following characteristics:
• It should be as detailed as possible. Like the resolution itself, the more clearly you can visualize what it is you want, the more easily you can manifest it.
• It should evoke feeling. Take a tip from advertisers who always evoke feelings to make you want something. See yourself as glamorous, or confident, or wealthy — whatever turns you on!
• It should be a single image. As you start to develop your image, many random ideas and images may play through your mind. Boil it down; abstract the meaning or common thread. For example, imagine a resolution about how you will relate to your children — you might envision them happily engaged in play, sitting on your lap, accepting a prize; you might think about positive comments from teachers and friend's parents; you might hear music or experience colors. In order to remind yourself of your resolution, you'll need a condensed version of all of this, something that functions like a billboard that features the high point of a movie.
• It should include you. The resolution is about you after all, not others. Going back to the previous example, make sure that the image shows you in the child's life and that you are doing something or behaving in a way that you want, that embodies your resolution.
• It may be literal or metaphoric. Suppose you have resolved to be master of your own feelings in certain situations. An effective image might realistically show you acting calmly in that situation; but you might also be really excited by an image of yourself standing at the helm of a ship, steering calmly through a storm — even though you never set foot in a boat! It doesn't matter if the vision is realistic, if it reminds you of your resolution.
• It should be physically depicted. Just as your resolution begins to come to life as you write it down, so your visualization begins to materialize in real life when you create a physical representation. This can be a drawing — never mind its merits as art — a collage, a statue, a shrine, some sort of installation — anything that gives a physical presence to the image you hold in your mind's eye.
• Find ways to nurture your resolution and keep it in focus on a daily basis. Your fertilized mental seed must be tended with positive expectation, if you want it to bear fruit in the physical world. For some resolutions, positive expectation may be quite easy once it is clear what you want. Some resolutions may be more difficult to achieve, or you may be given by habit to negative expectations in your life. The most effective way to create a positive expectation for your resolution is the simple act of saying it and seeing it daily. Find a niche in your day where you can get quiet, if only for a moment, to read your resolution and recall the visualization. This simple act will begin to train your mind to believe in the possibility of what you want to achieve. As you think, so shall you do.
• Pay attention to the feedback that you get and make adjustments when needed. Once your resolution in the form of a mental seed begins to take root, you will find yourself acting in ways that are consistent with your goals. Less easy to understand but true nonetheless, you will begin to attract into your life the people, resources, and situations that that will help your resolution come into being. All the time, however, you must pay attention to what the world is telling you about your resolution. Like a plant that requires a trellis or the occasional pruning, your resolution may require some adjustments. If you find over time that it is not manifesting, you may have to go back and refine it — perhaps making it more specific or appealing, perhaps a bit less ambitious. If you find that it does not interest you the way it once did, you might need to make it more ambitious. If you find that you are not acting consistently with your resolution, perhaps you need to affirm it more regularly, or make it public in a way that keeps you from running from it. Review all the previous guidelines and see if there is a way that you can make your resolution more powerful. Get expert help, if you need it, to manifest resolutions in specific areas such as business or relationships or finance or emotions or fitness.

There you have it. You've planted potent mental seeds in the garden of your mind; and you know how to tend to them so they will bear glorious fruit in the coming New Year!

Maarten Reilingh, Ph.D. is a Certified Empowerment Life Coach. To comment on this article or to ask him about life coaching, find him online at empowerment.webhop.net or call 1-800-210-8567. Material in this article is adapted with permission from Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It by David Gershon and Gail Straub.