More than 95% of all resolutions fail by the 17th of January, You may not know but among other celebrated days this day is known as “Quitter day”
Forget About it and focus on this instead.
Let see we can explore something together ( WARNING – read it carefully, it may encourage you to change, please don’t read it further if you don’t wish too 🙂 )
Let me start the topic by asking you one question : Would you be willing to change if you are perfect or so good at something or happy the way you are ??
Most of us will answer this as “NO”, why because it’s human nature that demands for more. We always want from good to better and better to best. We always wish for improvements. And any resolution is nothing but a promise to be the change you hope for. And regardless of what resolution you commit to, the goal is to improve life in the coming time.
Then why do we fail, even though we know it is for our best.
Let’s try to dig in deep by announcing that you all must be knowing that our brain helps us make all the major decisions in our life. But let me start this blog by telling you some things about your brain that you might not currently know.
Our Life is controlled by two major part of or brain – SUBCONSCIOUS MIND & CONSCIOUS MIND and studies say that 95% OF YOUR LIFE IS CREATED BY YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. While our conscious mind represents the thoughts we are aware of, it is our subconscious that controls all of our feelings, behaviours, and beliefs. Did you know that ???
In layman terms we can understand this as our conscious mind is a part of our brain which represents the thought we are aware of wherein the subconscious mind is the powerful secondary system that runs everything in our life. In our daily life, 95% of all our thoughts, beliefs, habits, actions, thought patterns, emotions, and feelings we experience are guided by your subconscious brain. It is our habit mind.
So to answer the question above that why we fail, it is because when our conscious mind try to change the way we behave, we often struggle to make any impact as our subconscious mind which is in charge of any change, start fighting for its survival, as it is very hard to try and break a habit, be it positive or negative.
Let’s try to understand by this example, Imagine we have a laptop which has a capacity of 4 GB RAM, now what will happen if you try to download a programme which requires 8 GB RAM to run. Do you think you will be able to run it. It may open up a bit with lots of glitch, you will find it very hard to work and will end up by deleting it as it surpasses your processing capacity. Subconscious mind is the Laptop capacity that we have and the conscious mind is the function through which we try to download the new programmes but fail to run it, as there is no compatibility.
This is exactly what happens to our new year resolutions. It is because most of our goals are set on a conscious level, and our conscious brain has a limited capacity. When we set a goal and try to achieve it, it goes well for a few initial days and loses its importance with time. As long as the battery of our willpower is charged, we continue but the moment it starts to get drained, the art of procrastination comes into the picture and our conscious brain fails to help us anymore. This is where our subconscious brain would step in and throw us off the right track, into our old habits.
Remember always that the reason for most of our failures is because we wish to bring change using only our conscious mind, unaware from the fact that it is actually our subconscious mind that is in charge of any change.
What is the Subconscious Mind then ??
I am sure you all will agree with me that our brains are extremely complicated. And The power of our subconscious mind goes further than we might think. For our better understanding we can understand it like a huge memory bank which stores our beliefs, our experience, our memories, our skills. As we grow old it helps to create patterns of how we live or precisely make our habits. All our habits of thinking and acting are stored in our subconscious mind. It memorized all our comfort zones and worked to keep us in them. And whenever we try to do anything new or change our habits/behaviours, it causes us to feel emotionally and physically uncomfortable and resist change.
So whenever you sense fear or discomfort for anything, please notice that your subconscious mind is activated. Fear of Ghost is also one of them
So what do we do now ?? Are we finished ?? Is there no way ??
Yes !! There is always a way. If we want our brain’s to help us, we need to make sure that our both conscious and subconscious mind is working in sync and helping us, not destroying us.
So, the immediate question is – How can we train our minds to work in sync. For example, our ability to drive a car: once we get skilled we stop thinking which gears to use, which pedals to press, or which mirror to look at, our tip to toe work in sync and everything gets done automatically. It’s a perfect example of both the mind working in sync. It can help when our conscious brain fails to operate, the subconscious brain will step in, and take care of the job.
By training the brain, what I mean to say is how we can create a pattern to push ourselves regularly out of our comfort zones by taking calculated risks. And when I ask to push ourselves out of our comfort zone, we need to know what causes us not to do it.
Yes are very right : PROCRASTINATION
THE ART OF PROCRASTINATION
It’s Sunday night and you have planned that tomorrow that is Monday onwards you are going to start your morning walk which is absolutely necessary given for xyz reason. Monday 5:00 AM your alarm buzzes, you wake up and you start thinking, due to some xyz reason you were awake till 11:00 PM and there are hardly a few hours that you could sleep. Since I have woken up today, I can do it tomorrow as well, will go to a timely sleep today and start fresh from tomorrow again. And thanks to your prefrontal cortex, within 3-5 minutes you get plenty of justification that why you should not wake up, you pullover the blanket to sleep again.
Sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone!
Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions. And 95 percent of us procrastinate to some level. Though, it may sound comfortable to know that you’re not alone, it can be sobering to realize just how much you are losing.
The Science of Procrastination
Let’s try to understand first why we procrastinate. The main reason to procrastinate to any work is because the level of motivation of not doing it is much higher than doing it. In the above example the motivation of sleep is much higher than waking up, hence, you obviously choose not to wake up. To reason with, even when you know you are wrong, your mind starts to give justification and we start procrastinating. What we don’t realise is that this justification later on converts into stress and leads you to be more less motivated and making the chain of procrastination to each of ours work. It becomes our habit, part of our daily life that how we respond to our responsibilities. It helps to make the procrastination from acute to chronic. Many of us may not realize it but decades of scientific research proves that procrastination is a complex problem that requires a thorough solution.
However, don’t let that discourage you; further in this blog I will try to explain a systematic approach that you can implement in order to beat your procrastination, together with a comprehensive list of anti-procrastination techniques that you can use.
How To Install Habits That Last
Based on the science of Behavioural Psychology “it takes a minimum 66 days to install one habit. And by the words of famous author “Robin Sharma”: All changes are hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. He suggested dividing the 66 days into three phases of 22 days each. Please go through his bestseller “ The 5AM Club”
However, do remember that at the end of the day, duration does not matter, whether it takes 5 or 50. You have to start from point “A” to reach point “B. You can’t reach to “Day 66” if there is no “Day 1”. It may not matter much if you mess up sometime oncourse as building better habits are process and not event. Philosophy of “Think Big and start small” may help you to achieve small but incremental improvements — rather than pressuring yourself into thinking that you have to do it all at once.
TINY TIPS TO HELP YOU ACHIEVE MORE
Please know that only wishful thinking doesn’t work. You need a proper system to achieve your goals. You need a specific blueprint to go from Place A to Place B. In nutshell “You Don’t Need Better Goals, You Need Better Systems. But the problem is we have been made to believe that to achieve better things in life, we need to set better goals. But how can you achieve them when you don’t have any clue or a road map? To put it bluntly, anyone can set a goal, how you plan to achieve matters the most. Today I can set a goal to reach the moon, but the question is, is it relevant to me and if yes how will I reach it?
Always remember – “Winners and Losers have the same goal”
Below is some of the point which helped me to find mine, may be it can help you find yours-
1. The Idea of having a “SMART” Goal
Professor Robert S. Rubin (Saint Louis University) wrote about SMART in an article for The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:
| S | SPECIFIC | What exactly will you accomplish? |
| M | MEASURABLE | How will you know when you have reached this goal? |
| A | ACHIEVABLE | Is the goal doable? Do you have the necessary skills and resources? |
| R | RELEVANT | Why is the result important? |
| T | TIME-BOUND | What is the time frame for accomplishing the goal? |
2. Ignore the Justification: The symbol of procrastination is justification. Don’t give your brain time to give you justification. The moment you allow it, you will be doomed. Idea is to just plan and work without giving any further thought, deep within your core you already know why you are doing it and why it is necessary, so there is no place for alternative thoughts.
3. Focus on your goals and visualise yourself, how you would feel once you achieve it: It is very important that you visualise yourself that what you are hoping for. Until you are very clear about your achievements and its effects on your life, it’s very hard to follow them. To give meaning to your goals, it has to resonate with you.
4. Break large works into smaller ones: Breaking large work into smaller sub-work can motivate you to take action. For example, if you wish to wake up early and go to the gym, may be making initial few days only for waking up at time and strolling in and around your house with coffee will pave the path for the future.
5. Reward yourself – You may design to reward yourself whenever you are reaching one milestone. For example, if you are able to wake up early to continue 6 days on time, give yourself the liberty to wake up a little late on 7th day or reward yourself with the food you wish to have for a long time.
6. The First step in creating massive change in your life is not actually believing that it’s possible, it’s being willing to see if it is possible.
7. Don’t allow other people’s fears to cast shadows of doubt.
8. Surround yourself with positive reinforcement.
9. Systems are more important than goals.
There could be a number of ideas as to how you can motivate yourself to go but as I mentioned above, you need to commit someday, regardless of challenges you may face. You need to bring change every day, does not matter how insignificant it is. Every child takes tiny steps before running. It takes time and patience. Commitment to continuity is the only answer.
Last but not the least “Taking immediate action on your goal is the only key to success. Free yourself from any limitation and doubts and remember always “the old you must die so that the new you can be reborn”.
