Helpful New Year’s Eve Resolutions
This article contains some useful tips about making helpful New Year’s Eve Resolutions. Change can come in an instant, but often New Year’s style resolutions are just a lot of hot air and really don’t take us anywhere.
Psychology can Help with
New Year’s Resolutions
It helps to realize that we all have multiple ego states — personalities if you will. Different parts of us want different things.
The Parent within, the Parent Ego state wants us to control us and is concerned — like our parents were when we were a child — about out safety.
This Ego state is called the Controlling Parent. The Parent Ego state can also be nurturing, this is called the Nurturing Parent Ego Stste.
The Child Ego state wants to have fun, to experience joy, good feelings.
The Adult Ego state wants to think things through, to reason.
So when making a New Year’s Eve Resolution, it helps to have a mini conference with our self — with our Parent, our Adult, and our Child Ego states. It’s a self assertion — a conversation between you and you!
For example, my New Year’s Resolution is to move to a more exciting location. That will please my Child Ego state. To listen to my Child, I do a little role playing. I talk in a child like voice and let my right hand be the Child and my Left hand either the Adult or Parent.
My right hand cringes like a little child as I whisper, “Want to get out of here. I want to go home, to land where I was born. I want to see the beautiful mountains, to breathe the beautiful air, to eat those wonderful bran muffins.”
I point with my left hand in a controlling way as I allow my Parent Ego state speak:
“You know you can’t afford to move! You know you are lazy. You know how much hard work it is to move? You have too many things! You will never move and you know it.”
My Inner Child speaks, trying to appear to my inner Controlling Parent: ”I’m sorry. Maybe you are right. I don’t work hard enough.”
My Inner Parent is caught off guard by the apology and softens. The Nurturing Parent Ego state is suddenly activated and says: “Maybe I was too harsh on you. Maybe you can change. Let me give you a hug.”
Inner Child: “What do I have to do?”
The question “What do I have to do?” suddenly activates my Inner Adult who likes questions and likes to solve problems. My Inner Adult Speaks:
Get some data on housing prizes.
How much can you rent your existing house for?
What can you do today to take small step toward your goal of moving?
You see how this dialog starts to produce some productive ideas?
“It’s not who you want to kiss on New Year’s It is who you might meet (if you are single) and whom you might enjoy the coming year with.”
By: Phil Seyer
