Try to Break Your New Year’s Resolution

You may be surprised to find that if you really TRY hard to BREAK your new year’s resolution you may actually stick to it. That is the power of the word “try.” Use it and the opposite will happen. Alternatively, you can decide upfront not to have a resolution.

At the beginning of the new year you may have come up with goals of what you would like to achieve. Committing to some smaller, more achievable modest steps may also be a way to assure they will become reality, but that is another topic. By now you may already be well along in working on making the promises you made to yourself a reality. There may be a rough spot in the way of your desires and you may start wavering in your confidence. Notice how you phrase the situation to yourself. Do you still say with enthusiasm “I will…” or have you arrived at “Ok, I’ll try …”

Often when confronted with a new or challenging task, “try” is the word of the day. When we work with medical teams helping to get their patients more comfortably and safely through procedures we often hear suggestions such as “Try to hold still” or “Would you like to try to do a relaxation exercise?” The thing is that “try” implies that one cannot do something. You can test this out with a simple example: Try to close your eyes (something we also hear often said during procedures). Just try to close them for a minute. Now do something different. Try to keep your eyes open for 2 minutes. Notice what happens to your eyelids’ desire in terms of wanting to stay open or to close.

Along the same way I now want you to TRY really hard to BREAK your new year’s resolution. If you put a really conscious effort into trying this you may have the best chance to realize your goals.