by Kelsey Emmanuel 

Why do your New Year’s resolutions fail every year? You feel you need to make extreme changes. You feel that you have a long way to go, so you need to go big or go home, but going cold turkey can be hard on you mentally and physically. Achieving long-term goals goes deeper than needing motivation, self-discipline and willpower. If you want to make a true change in your life, you need to take incremental steps daily, be patient, and let them compound for you. There’s no magic bullet to success. Your action steps need to be sustainable, so you are doing them every day until they become a habit. The first thing you can do to set yourself up for success is to make a paradigm shift. Some ways to do that is to stop relying on motivation, work on your philosophy and apply the law of correspondence to your life.

Stop Relying On Motivation

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of making New Year’s resolutions. The gasoline that your resolutions are running off of is motivation. Now, motivation is not the enemy; it is great to have, but it cannot be the foundation you are working off of. Here’s why: motivation is affected by your mood and emotions, and we all know that life can be an emotional rollercoaster ride. Therefore, your motivation will naturally ebb and flow. You cannot rely on it to get you from Point A to Point B because once you lose it, you’ll stop taking action and working toward hitting your goals. Motivation not only disrupts consistency, but it can delay your start time. The worst thing you can do is wait to feel ready. You just need to start with something simple that you can do every single day.

Having The Right Philosophy

Take radical responsibility for everything that is happening for you by fixing your philosophy. Your philosophy determines how you perceive things and impacts everything you do. For example, if Thomas Edison had the philosophy that “failure is not an option” where would our world be today? In his efforts to create his electric light bulb, he failed thousands of times. If failure was not an option for him, he wouldn’t have tried 1,000 more times to find success. It is crucial to know what philosophies are running your life. The philosophy you hold affects your attitude, which in turn affects your behavior, which affects your results.

The Law Of Correspondence Is Key

The Law of Correspondence basically states that your reality is a result of your innermost dominant thought.

If you want to take control of your life, you need to work on your self-talk. In order to have a breakthrough, take a hard look at yourself and ask, “How are my self-talk, inner thoughts, and attitudes causing this situation in my life?” 

Take ownership of all of your problems so that you can apply a solution that will help you grow out of them. Ask yourself, “What are my beliefs about myself, relationships, my career, family, etc.? Where did these thoughts come from? Why do I think this way?

What is the root cause of these thoughts?” More often than not, the beliefs and thoughts you hold have been ingrained in you since you were a child. Those beliefs came from your environment, parents and outside influences. You need to dig deep to ultimately dissolve your old limiting beliefs, so that you can make room for the new beliefs of your inner world. Your reality is a mirror of what is happening within you at a conscious and subconscious level.

Ultimately, it is important to understand how you function. You know yourself better than anyone else. Make it your responsibility to observe your behaviors and reflect on how they’ve impacted your life. Every moment in life is an opportunity for you to act in alignment with a positive philosophy.

Kelsey Emmanuel is a certified CrossFit Level 1 trainer. Follow along with her workout tips and tutorials on Instagram @kelsey.emmanuel and on Facebook at Kelsey’s Health Journey.