The life expectancy of most New Year’s Resolutions can be measured at best in days, some even mere hours. So how to create lasting change? Several ways:

First, let’s acknowledge that Want Power usually overwhelms Will Power and Desire all too often trumps Discipline. Thus, one key to change is to learn how to make yourself WANT what is good for you, to teach yourself how to DESIRE the change you seek to create.

Second, know that context, group social norms and environment powerfully impact behavior.

Third, your belief systems about yourself and about the world around you are powerful self-fulfilling prophecies.

So, if you want a better future self:

1) Change your Context, Find a Better Tribe, Upgrade your Entourage: You want to live longer, be healthier? Find friends who exercise regularly, run, play a sport like tennis, or work out. Hang out with them, you will find yourself tending to do likewise. Want to eat healthy? Avoid folks who drink for entertainment or relish fatty fried foods and long sit down, heavy meals; cultivate those for whom nutrition is standard and light meals the norm.

2) Evolve Your Self Concept, Boost Your Identity: Write out who you think you are, who you think you can become, what you think you can be. Hold that shining vision in your mind, return to it regularly, journal about it, see it, feel it, become it.

3) Change Your Mind, Change Your Life: Find some source of inspiration and return to it regularly. Become a Lifelong Learner. Listen to books in your car that propel you forward, help you be your best self more often. You will see it when you believe it.

4) Practice Positive Visualization: Worry is nothing but negative visualization; get your mind, your inner self talk, fully on YOUR side, make it your coach, your inner mentor, your BFF. Never rent out space in your head to the opposition. Once you realize the power of your thoughts, you will never allow a negative thought to remain in your head. Thoughts held in mind attract in kind, what you focus on expands. Immerse yourself in values and attributes you want to have, surround yourself with people who live them and environments where they flourish, and you will absorb them.

Closing Quotes:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn, 1930-2009

“As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts.” – Siddhartha Gautama, b. circa 500 BC, died approx. age 80

“Your subconscious mind makes all your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept and your innermost beliefs about yourself.” – Brian Tracy, b. 1944, Maximum Achievement

“The greatest barrier to achievement and success is not lack of talent or ability but rather the feeling that achievement and success, above a certain level, are outside our self-concept, our image of who we are and what is appropriate to us.” – Nathaniel Branden, 1930-2014, How To Raise Your Self-Esteem

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier