Keeping true to your New Year Resolutions

Charles Lamb said New Year's day is every man's birthday.  Every year we try to use this milestone day to remake ourselves - to be reborn in the image that we think we should be. 

Ogden Nash said "Every New Year is a direct descendent isn't it? of a long line of proven criminals. 

While the New Year resolutions are that milestone chance to change it seems we find comfort in rituals and revert back to our ritualistic - chip/chocolate binge eating, watching TV from dinner to bedtime or not writing daily. 

According to a psychologist a habit is a combination of psychological and physiological aspects.  People repeat behaviour.  Dr. Joe Dispensa autho of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself says that "by the time we are 35 years old we reach a point where our personalities become a set of memorized behaviours and emotional reactions that runs like an automated program."  So his suggestion is to
reprogram yourself in the form that matches your intentions.

So what is the solution?  Be clear about your intentions every day and try to match your behaviour to them.  He advocates a daily practice of reprogramming your behaviours and thoughts, techniques like mediation during which you mentally rehearse how you want your day to go.
The neurologial hardware installyed during the process will start changing the behaviour.

One pitfall is that when we start changing we may no longer feel like ourselves and revert back to the safe and soothing automatic behaviour.

So the advice from Dr. Dispenza is:
Make a plan by:
Identifying what you want to change,
specify how you will achieve this change making sure of the practicality of the plan,
implement.
Make sure the goals are incremental and practical for yourself rather than lofty and distant.

Each morning ask yourself "What do I want to be today?"
Then yesterday's non-compliance won't matter so much.