Keeping New Year’s Resolutions

Our desires are far more powerful and long-lasting than our willpower is.

Many people don't keep up their New Year's resolutions beyond three weeks into January.

To keep them going longer, you need to examine desires you have had in the past (and maybe still now) which are unhealthy, and why you have them.

If you want to quit drinking soda, feel through why you wanted it so much in the first place. What does it do for you emotionally, and what associations do you have with drinking soda?

If you want to stop eating 3 hours before bedtime, look at what nighttime eating has given you emotionally and what are the causes of a dependency on late-night eating.

Remember that the reasons for our unhealthy tendencies and compulsions are rarely as simple as, "Because it tastes good" or "Because it's a habit."

For example, diet soda could help someone to suppress anxiety and fear, and late night eating could serve as a companion so as to not have to feel loneliness.

A reminder that this reflection should be done without any judgment of yourself!

While you only rely on willpower to try to make yourself act differently, you are exerting huge amounts of energy to overcome what deep down, you really still desire to do.

By weeding out the causes for desires that are unhealthful, you won't need to overcome anything, and you won't need willpower.

For example, I don't need any willpower whatsoever to not eat animal products, and this is because I have worked through what animal products did for me emotionally.

I had to work through how animal products suppress feelings better than plant-based food, my emotions about what others would think of me being the weird or the different one, and the false beliefs and fears I'd grown up with about nutrition and how to be healthy.

So despite having lived on copious amounts of animal products all my life, I don't need willpower to overcome the fact that deep down, I really do want to eat cheese or chicken, because I don't have any of those desires left.

And this can be applied to all health and nutrition habits that are damaging and that we would like to stop.

Photo by Ohjim Chuttersnap via Unsplash