4 Simple Steps to Keep Your Resolutions! – Ekata Training Center

Our intent is pure! We’re ready to make a change! Our will is going to be like iron! We start off strong and then several weeks pass, something happens to break our rhythm and poof! We’re back where we started. The goal varies – weight loss, drinking, smoking, living healthy, reducing stress and anger, porn, the list goes on.
But why doesn’t it stick? I’m a professor at UCLA and this one of the topics I study. The four simple steps I’m going to share with you are just that – simple, but not easy. There is no such thing as a quick fix for behavioral change. But research shows there is a clear path that has been proven effective.
1. Take Simple Steps
a. Once a well-known professor with an immense workload was asked how he did it. He said, “I eat the apple one bite at a time”. Identify one goal that you want to achieve and design a plan with simple, manageable steps that will bring you closer to the goal. And make sure you define clear markers to tangibly gauge progress along the way.
2. Place Yourself in a Supportive Environment
a. If you love ice cream and work in an ice cream shop, but want to lose weight, it’s going to be a rough road. If you want to be healthy, place yourself around healthy people. Community is important! If you are in a toxic environment, make a change.
3. Motivation
a. In the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous it is stated that a “profound psychic change” is necessary to break the patterns of a chronic alcoholic. Motivation must come from within and be reinforced by practice, community and altered behavioral patterns. Your own experience, mindfulness practice, therapy and reading or watching inspirational works all contribute to motivation.
4. Repetition
a. Once you break a pattern, the new pattern must be reinforced with repetition. We must develop self-discipline to create change. Think of a stream running down a mountain. To alter its path requires work – building a dam to redirect the stream. And when the stream is redirected, it will take years to wear a grove in the rock. This exactly how building new neural networks in the brain works.
It’s not easy, but it absolutely can be done. We specialize in this type of work at Ekata Training Center – for both kids and adults. Come see how we can help you stick to it!