Using Values to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

Because change is challenging for majority of us, New Year's resolutions often fail to realize change takes time. Like growing something you planted, a fruit tree will take years to mature and consistently bear fruit. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers solutions to guide us through the process of change, that is, our New Year’s resolutions. A core aspect of ACT is becoming aware of and defining your values and then engaging in behaviors that create neuroplastic changes in your brain.

It entails being “psychologically flexible” as opposed to being rigid and self-critical. You choose to behave in a manner consistent with your values understanding that you will “fail” every day. But the values will remain, and you can keep moving in that direction.

By determining or redefining who or what is important to you a.k.a. values… We apply an intrinsic ability to motivate ourselves versus doing things because we have to wear a “shirt” that is outside of us. Consider a fishing rod with a dangling carrot. What you move towards is where true healing occurs. You have to live a good life in order to have a good life. 

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