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Health & Fitness

Change, The New Year and Your Resolutions

Here are some stages you might be going through if you are trying to make changes in the New Year.

How are you doing on your New Year’s resolutions? Here is a quick reminder that big changes are a series of small steps. If you’ve made a commitment for things to be different this year, consider breaking your commitment down into daily and weekly goals. Often commitments to change involve a change in lifestyle, and it’s easy to underestimate how difficult this is. Often going back to old routines often leads to old behaviors. 

What is one thing that will be doing differently today, this week or this month? How will you keep track of changes? Consider making your commitment to change public.

Who is supporting you in making these changes? 

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Someone once told me that if you are on the bottom the only way you can move is up. Here are 27 stages of change that you might be going through right now:

  1. Be reminded on some gut level of why you want or need to change
  2. Avoid everything related to changing
  3. Consider those who have changed
  4. Compare yourself to those whose lives are different
  5. Attack yourself for not changing
  6. Start to take the first step toward change
  7. Become overwhelmed
  8. Wallow a bit
  9. Consider the benefits of change
  10. Get motivated or inspired by others whose lives are different
  11. Be reminded on some gut level of how things are miserable for you now
  12. Ask for help
  13. Experience a sense of efficacy or encouragement
  14. Experience a setback or discouragement
  15. Try again
  16. Become overwhelmed
  17. Avoid people and places reminding you of change, at least for a while
  18. Give up
  19. Try again
  20. Get reminded of how miserable you are
  21. Approach everything that you’ve tried to avoid
  22. Get overwhelmed
  23. Take a small step and stick with it
  24. Notice the pros and cons of the small step
  25. Rant and rave to other people in your life about how things aren’t working
  26. Try to get help again
  27. Get motivated, take another step.

Don’t kid yourself. This stuff is hard. We’ve all been there! 

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