As New Year’s prompts you to look ahead, it is worth considering how you can fortify your mind in the coming year. Your brain is your greatest asset when it comes to goals and self-improvement, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. If you are like most of us, you have some negative thought patterns that have become well-established during your life path. Although these are roadblocks to your success, you can retrain your marvelous brain to replace them with new resolve, positivity, and success-building patterns. Though this effort is a war of many battles—a process rather than a one-time fix—you can set yourself on the road to victory.
Identify the Issues
First, you need to figure out what thoughts are holding you prisoner. These will be different for everyone, but here are four of the most basic ones that could be stopping you from reaching your potential.
External Validation: Was it always important for you to get good grades in school? Perhaps you had pressure from a parent to be in the top five, or they would take away some privilege or activity from you. Then again, it could be you felt that being an honor student would make your peers admire you. The pressure to be better than everyone else can yield some good qualities like perseverance and discipline, but it comes with side effects. If you are doing things so others approve, or to be better than others, you are motivated by external approval, rather than by an intrinsic sense of worth.
Perfectionism: That need for external validation can also come with exacting standards for yourself. Maybe you expect yourself to be perfect, and you have developed an all-or-nothing mentality. You’re either the best or you’re terrible. How does this attitude impact your current approach to achieving new goals? Once a perfectionist, always a perfectionist, right? Wrong! You’re never going to be perfect, and that’s OK. It’s called “being human.”
Fear of Failure: If you seek external validation and believe you should be perfect, you don’t have much margin for error—maybe none. You may have been taught that failure is unacceptable, but it is more than acceptable; it is an essential part of success. Failure isn’t the problem; failure is only when you mess up and don’t try again. Embracing failure is the path to improvement and success.
Self-Criticism: If you have the problems above, you probably have some sharp words for yourself from time to time. How do you see yourself? Do you like the person you’ve become? Do you focus more on your faults than on the broader quality of your character? To move forward, you need to give up the negative mental pictures that have left you with a misshapen self-image. Many, if not most, of these delusions come from notions acquired in childhood.
What Can You Do Now?
Reboot: What do you do when your computer freezes? You reboot it: turn it off and then turn it back on. That corrects a great many issues and gets things in proper working order again. It’s the same thing with your brain: It may require a reboot to clear out those self-sabotaging mindsets that have become roadblocks to your progress. A reset helps you replace those negative issues with life-giving truths.
Qualify: Do not disqualify yourself. You are not too old, too young, too tall, too short, too this, or too that to accomplish your goals. Take inventory of yourself. What’s in your hand? What qualities, abilities, relationships, dreams, talents, and skills do you possess? Please make a list of them because it helps you to write them down. Refer to your list often as you begin retraining your brain. You’ll discover qualities you’ve overlooked or forgotten were there. Wake up to the beauty inside yourself.
Create: What can you do with what you have? You are a creative being, and you need to build something, in some fashion, if you are to be fully alive. It doesn’t have to be a significant undertaking: maybe something simple, such as arranging flowers in a vase or trying a new recipe. Did you know that creativity is self-care? If you think you are not a creative person, ditch that roadblock and look at what you have already crafted in your life. And then, look at the potential that awaits you. Go ahead! Get excited about this!
Look Ahead
Now that you have identified and expelled the roadblocks and rebooted your brain to realize positivity in your life, know that challenges will arise, and dark thoughts will try to nest in your head again. Because you are rewiring your brain to change years of entrenched thinking, you must be aggressively prepared to rise above any challenges that present themselves. Those self-sabotaging thoughts are highly persistent, and they will again try to influence you—often in the sneakiest ways possible.
This is the time for a counterattack! Go back to the list of your qualities, abilities, relationships, dreams, talents, and skills. Express them verbally, and then go and create something. You must admit, that feels good! Congratulate yourself. You have won another battle against the habits and notions that are trying to hold you back.
Don’t Quit
Think of it like this: If you go to the gym and work out one time, you will feel some changes in your muscles, but one time won’t do very much for you in the long run. It takes repetition and practice to strengthen your muscles. It is the same when you want to change your thoughts and habits. Don’t get complacent with one victory. This isn’t about a single win, but rather a new lifestyle. As you continue to train your brain, like any muscle, it will become transformed and programmed to work for you, not against you. So, take stock of yourself and weigh your resolutions. And keep up the excellent work!
This article was first published in Radiant Life Magazine.