Making Resolutions That Work

What follows is a list of tips that will help guide you to successful resolution planning, implementation and follow-through. My sincerest good wishes for a sensational 2009!

Get in Touch With Your Motivation: The word resolution means determination. To be determined to do something you should feel strongly about it and be firm about your purpose. What is your motivation? What drives you to choose this particular goal? Write down the benefits and advantages you will receive when you accomplish this goal and the disadvantages if you don’t. Be sure that these are important and powerful enough to make a real difference in your life. (See my Newsletter on Motivation by clicking here.)

Create a Plan: With a written plan your resolution becomes more concrete. It is not just an idea residing in your head but something you’ve translated into workable steps. These steps should be thoughtful and achievable. They should be incremental so that each one leads to the other.

Think in Positive Terms: Define your goal(s) in terms of what you want to do rather than what you will not do. For example if your resolution was to cope more effectively with your anger in 2007 then your plan might be to become more accepting or tolerant or understanding of others rather than simply “not be angry”.

Think in “Lifestyle” Terms: Whatever your resolution may be it is critical to your success to see it as part of a improved lifestyle you want to enjoy. If you want to lose weight for example, you would do well to think about becoming healthier throughout the year by making better food choices as well as being more active on a regular basis.

Get Help if Necessary: To incorporate important changes into your improved lifestyle plan you may need some help. To get fit for example you may want to hire a personal trainer or enroll in a fitness or yoga program. To improve your relationship you may want to get some relationship coaching. Don’t hesitate to get the help you need.

Allow for Setbacks: Even with the best of intentions and a strong will sometimes things don’t work out quite the way we want them to. Keep pushing forward! A person should not give up on his fitness program because he was unable (or unmotivated) to train for a couple of weeks. Recognize that creating a new improved pattern of behavior requires perseverance. Be flexible enough to sustain a setback and then go on with the plan.

Share Your Resolutions With Others: Tell your trusted friends or loved ones what your plan is. It is a good idea to let others know about the changes you want to make in your life. Their support can help keep you on track.

Go For Balance: Choose a plan that will enhance your life rather than restrict it. For example if your resolve to become more financially successful in 2007, it might not require that you simply devote more time to work. Instead you might spend more time becoming more creative by freeing yourself up from the details of day to day work activity. Creating a balanced life, one that gives you time for yourself, family and friends will provide a far better environment for you to succeed in achieving your goal.

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Creating A Better Attitude

The following is a list of tips you can use to create a better attitude. I recommend that you try these for 1 week in order to form a better pattern of thinking and feeling.

1) Ask Better Questions: If you think of your brain as a magnificent computer, programmed to respond to specifics, then it  makes sense that if you ask it a question, “why do bad things always happen to me?”, it will come up with the answers to that particular question, answers that will support that mindset. Likewise, if you have trained yourself to ask better questions like, “what can I do to improve my situation?”, it will come up with answers that will help you to solve your problem.

2) Create Change: As soon as you recognize you are feeling negative, angry or generally pessimistic, start saying at least 10 things that you are grateful for. You must say them and picture them at the same time. The stronger the image and the more focus you give it the better the result. Try this everyday for 1 week.

3) Tell Others: Announce your gratitude whenever you can and to whomever you can. This might mean that you mention being thankful for something while having lunch with a business associate. It might also mean that you tell someone you care about how grateful you are to have them in your life.

4) Do Something “Good” for Someone Everyday: Everyday choose to do something positive for someone else without expecting something in return. Whether this is an act of courtesy or true charity the important thing is that it will help you to become a little less self centered. Acts of selflessness often help us to feel good….try it for one week.

5) Journal It Every Night: Every night take some time to write down some things/people that you are grateful for. These can be things that happened during that day or simply the things/people you have in your life every day.This activity will begin to train your mind to think about the positive things in your life. It will help you to become better at changing your perspective thereby improving your attitude.

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Changing Your Attitude

In a busy, fast paced and often negative world it is easy to lose sight of the important things. For many of us it is only when we or someone we love experiences a crisis that we stop and consider the things and people we are thankful for but often take for granted.

Being grateful is not a New Age idea. If you are thankful for what and who you have in your life you create a state of mind that lifts your spirits and opens you up creatively. There is ample proof that a positive perspective and a balanced outlook tend to enhance the natural power of the immune system, helping one to fight disease and stress more effectively.

There is also ample proof that being angry, bitter and generally stressed (click here to see Newsletter on  Chronic Stress) compromises the immune system, making one more susceptible to disease and system breakdown. The immune system is delicate and can break down when stress hormones (acid like substances) are continually attacking it.

The way we feel influences the way we think. We are emotionally driven creatures, even if we are unaware of the emotions.

Think about the way you feel and behave when you are having a “bad” day. Almost anything you do has a negative quality to it. Your perspective is dark, your thoughts are pessimistic, and you’re feeling low, perhaps irritable or angry as you see a narrow or limited picture of the world.

Now think about the way you feel on a “good” day. You’re upbeat, your thoughts are positive, you’re mind is open and creative and you are a lot more pleasant to be with.

What’s the difference between the “good” and “bad” days? Your perspective or attitude! How you see the world, the emotional lens you look through, determines your mood and what type of day you will have…and you are in charge!

Our behavior is informed or driven by the emotional state we put ourselves in. The more often we experience an emotional state, good or bad, the easier it is to slip into that state again. If you are accustomed to being in a pessimistic or negative state then it is likely that, as a result of the way you have trained your brain, you will fall into that state more easily. The same principle can be applied to being in a positive state of mind.

Having a sense of gratitude (an Attitude of Gratitude) helps to create a positive state, lifting the spirit, causing a more desirable effect on the mind and body. Practicing gratitude can help you change your thoughts from fearful and negative to thankful and hopeful.  It is often the best therapeutic tool you can use, switching from a state of complaining (the “poor me” syndrome) to being thankful.

This type of switching can be learned. You can train yourself, with practice over time, to create a better state of mind. Using gratitude or thankfulness as a vehicle to achieve a better attitude or perspective is a method that people have been using for generations.

In the next article I give some tips for you to use to accomplish this.

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How To Improve Your Memory

There are many ways to improve your memory. Getting enough sleep, eating right, reducing stress and not abusing drugs or alcohol are important for obvious reasons. However many of the tips I offer in this article are memory assisting (mnemonic) methods that you can employ today.

Concentrate/Pay Attention: Sounds like a no-brainer but for Acquisition or Encoding to take place you must concentrate on what you are trying to remember. Often we are so busy doing something that we are not paying enough attention to encode the information in the first place.

Picture It: Whenever possible create a picture in your mind of what you are trying to remember. Adding a visual sense or image to the information creates more relevance and makes it more likely to get stored.

Make It Relevant: It is easier for Consolidation and Retrieval to take place if the new information is associated with already existing information. Pairing the new information with an image, a joke or even a sound will help.

Use Acronyms: Using the first letter of the words you are trying to remember to make up another word has always been a great way to remember long names or lists of things. For instance the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is NASA, a web log is a BLOG and Information Technology is IT.

Use Acrostics: An Acrostic is text (or a poem) in which the letters (or words) of the Acrostic spell another word. The letters often come at the beginning of the words. For example the Acrostic RANED helps you to remember to: Read A Newsletter Every Day.

Use Rhymes: Who doesn’t remember, Thirty days hath September, April, June and …what was the next one? Rhyming is fun and helps put otherwise mindless or irrelevant information into organized auditory patterns.

“Chunk” Your Information: This means putting information into manageable segments. For example if you want to remember a series of numbers you might turn them into segments of 5 or 7 each. Telephone numbers are mostly 7 digit segments (apart from area codes) so that we can remember them. You can also give them a sort of rhythm as you commit them to memory.

RepeatRepeatRepeat: Repetition is practice and we all know that “practice makes perfect”. Repetition sends the target information through the hippocampus (see previous article) thereby making it more likely to Consolidate or get stored in the brain. ­

Organize It: Organizing information into relevant categories gives it more meaning. A form of organization is a simple outline (like the ones you learned in school) that breaks an idea down into relevant parts. An example might be remembering items on a shopping list in food groups rather than random grocery items.

Make Dramatic Connections: Associating the information you want to remember with different images can help in effectively storing it in your brain for retrieval. For example if you wanted to remember the name, Tom Cruise you might associate him with a cruise ship.

Talking Out Loud: Repeating the information out loud by saying it to yourself or to others creates an opportunity for auditory encoding to take place. Saying it to others is a form of teaching others the information. This is active learning and is very helpful in storing information.

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How Memory Works

Understanding memory and how it works can be very complicated. Therefore in this month’s Newsletter, I will focus on explaining the three basic memory functions: Acquisition (or encoding); Consolidation (or storing); Retrieval (or recalling).

Acquisition (encoding): Memories are formed by acquiring (or learning) information. In this stage you actively receive and process data. This data gets placed, for a time, into temporary nerve cells, like the ram in your computer. This information can have color, sound, smell or emotion connected to it. The more the memory is connected to one of the senses the more likely it is that it will stay with you. Depending on how important or meaningful the memory is to you, it will either get dissolved or get transferred to storage.

Consolidation (storage): Once a memory is acquired it has to be strengthened or enhanced to be consolidated and stored for while. A memory can often be reinforced because it relates to an already pre-existing memory. For example, you would likely remember learning something new about your spouse or loved one than you would about a complete stranger because of all the corresponding spouse memories in your brain.

Retrieval (recalling): We use our short-term or working memory to retain and retrieve lots of data every day. Remembering a phone number or someone’s name is an example of short-term memory recall. Here is where the brain calls upon the nerve-cell pathways to bring up stored data. The retrieval process can be slow or fast (instant recall) depending on many variables such as: how relevant the material was in the first place, how rested you are at the time you are trying to remember and how emotional you feel at that moment.

Long term memory is where working memory stores data. Long term memory is the equivalent to a storage disc or hard drive where the data is kept permanently.

In order for something to be stored in long term memory it has to be strengthened or reinforced. This incredible process involves a part of the brain known as the hippocampus, located in the inner fold of the temporal lobe (we actually have two hippocampi, one on each side of the brain).

The hippocampus is responsible for sorting through all these bits of data, like code, and making sense of them by sending them back to our consciousness with meaning. When a memory gets reinforced through repetition it travels through the hippocampus several times so as to become “imprinted” or permanently stored.

Improving memory, both short and long term, has always been a challenge. In the next article I give some tips about how to improve your memory.

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The Top Defenses

The following are some of the most recognizable defense mechanisms. See if you can identify which one(s) work best and help you the most in everyday life.

Denial (of reality): It is the refusal to accept what is real and acting or behaving as though we do not recognize the consequences of our behavior. The example was given of the acloholic in the previous article denying the obvious negative impact his addiction was having on his family.

Displacement: It is the shifting or redirecting of feelings from a dangerous target to a less dangerous target. For example, if your boss gets you angry you might yell at your spouse or child instead of risking the loss of your job by becoming angry with your boss.

Idealization: It is a type of denial but takes the form of holding a person in such high regard as to make them “all good” without any real faults. This defense enables the person using it to mask any negative feelings they have for the idealized person. An example might be someone who will not allow any negative, even if true, talk about his/her mother or father because he/she can’t tolerate or admit feeling negative towards them. Instead the person might talk about them as though they were “perfect” parents.

Intellectualization: It is the excessive use of thought or abstraction without the emotional component in an attempt to detach from what otherwise might be very powerful and uncomfortable feelings. For example when told of a loved one’s terminal illness a person might focus on the statistical likelihood of the person getting well and not allow feelings of grief or sadness to get felt.

Projection: It is the attribution to others of the negative or unacceptable thoughts we have of ourselves. For example we might be angry with our spouse and accuse him/her of being hostile towards us.. We can’t deal with the angry feelings so we project them onto the spouse.

Rationalization: It is coming up with explanations to justify a situation while denying your feelings about it. In the previous article the example was given of not getting the job you wanted and then rationalizing that it was too far away anyway.

Regression: It is returning to an earlier stage of development where childish behavior might have been more acceptable. For example we might have a temper tantrum if something doesn’t go our way.

Repression: It is the pushing into the unconscious and out of our awareness the most unwanted thoughts or feelings. These feelings are usually very painful and could cause us great upset. An example might be sexual abuse at an early age that remains “forgotten”.

Reaction Formation: It is taking the opposite position or reacting in the opposite way you feel because if you reacted in the way you truly felt you would become too anxious or uncomfortable. An example might be acting as if you are very fond of someone you actually dislike. The difference between just simply being phony and using this defense is that you really convince yourself that you like the person.

Sublimation: It is the conversion of socially unacceptable desires or impulses into more acceptable and constructive actions. A classic example of this is the surgeon who sublimates his desire to cut people into a career where it is acceptable to do just that.

Undoing: It is an attempt to get rid of guilty or uncomfortable feelings by compensating another whether it is real or symbolic compensation. The feelings may come from thoughts and not from actual deeds. An example may be a loving spouse that has sexual feelings for a neighbor who may suddenly decide to give his/her wife an expensive present, in effect compensating the spouse as a way of dealing with or reversing the lustful thoughts for the neighbor.

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Ego Defense Mechanisms

The Ego Defense Mechanisms are mostly unconscious psychological processes. We really don’t think about them they just happen automatically. They develop early on as we grow from childhood.

The Ego is the part of the personality that helps us deal with the real world. Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality, from which the idea of the Ego is derived, is far too complex to review at length in this Newsletter. Part of the theory, simply put however, is that all humans develop defense mechanisms to deal with deep feelings of hurt, anxiety, guilt, shame, fear, incompetence, embarrassment, self loathing or sadness.

These feelings are very difficult to cope with. We have to develop ways to manage our internal stress and anxiety, often caused by these feelings, so that we can function in the world. It is the job of the Ego to manage our feelings while adjusting to the reality of our circumstances.

In effect the Ego develops ways for us to present ourselves to others while reducing our internal stress. The defense mechanisms that the Ego employs serve a useful and protective function. They are adaptive and help us to integrate successfully into our world. If our defenses are flexible and function well we can achieve a balanced life and often have good relationships with others.

However, because we humans are so complex and our perceptions so subjective, we can sometimes distort reality, making it very difficult to resolve a problem.

In the case of an alcoholic or drug addict for example, the defense mechanism of Denial protects him from facing the truth about his problem. Even when others present the facts and show him how he has caused himself and his loved ones pain he will distort those facts and defend himself using Denial. (To understand more about Alcoholism  read my Newsletter on the subject by clicking: http://www.aventurastressrelief.com/Newsletters.cfm).

Defense mechanisms are maladaptive and can do us harm when they become the primary method of dealing with stress. In the example of the alcoholic, using Denial helps him to distort reality thereby reducing his anxiety. If he accepted the fact that he had a problem, and stopped using Denial, he’d have to deal with life without alcohol and that could cause him greater anxiety. However, relying on Denial as his primary defense keeps him trapped in the  addictive behavior.

Rationalization is another defense mechanism that you’ll recognize because it is so common. It is used when we are faced with something that is too difficult to accept so we make up a “logical” reason to fit the circumstances.

For example, if someone has interviewed for a great job that is 30 minutes away by car and is then turned down, he might say that he really didn’t want the job anyway because it was too far away. In this example Rationalization helps him to deal with feelings of being rejected and serves to soften the blow of losing the job opportunity.

In the next article I will review some of the more well known defense mechanisms. See if you can identify which ones you use and if you are guilty of using any too often.

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Looking At Yourself First

In the previous article I discussed how choosing a long term partner may be compelled by inner forces unknown to us. We are complex creatures and are often not clear about what drives or motivates us. When you enter into a relationship that begins to take a serious path ask yourself the following questions:

1) Am I feeling needy? Do you feel as though, without this person in your life, you would become mentally, physically and emotionally impoverished? If so, think about why? Is he appealing to the part of you that never had enough nurturing, that could never please your parent(s) causing you to want even more from him/her? You might end up feeling smothered or smothering your partner.

2) Am I always trying to make him/her happy at any cost? Are you trying too hard to be “liked” and not being yourself? Is he/she appealing to the part of you that never felt appreciated for who you are? If you are doing all the work in the relationship ask yourself why?

3) Am I trying to change him/her? Is there something about this partner that you do not like or doesn’t fit for you? Do you feel that if you showed him/her more love he/she would be different? Not accepting a person for who they are and trying to change them so that they fit your own idea of who they “should” be could be catastrophic later.

4) Am I feeling needed, controlled or loved? Does he/she cherish or consume you? Are you interpreting his/her need to always be with you, know where you are or even determine who you spend time with a sign of how much you are loved? Perhaps growing up you were given a very “short leash” and that feels comforting. Or your family might not have shown enough interest in what you did or who you spent time with and your partner’s over-interest seems to fill an old need.

5) Am I being myself, or am I really acting? Are your friends saying you are different when you are with him/her? Do you disregard your feelings for the sake of staying together? This indicates that you feel you can’t trust this person to be yourself with him/her. You may have played the chameleon early in your life to avoid conflict in your family and feel accepted. This denial of self, not showing the real you but pretending to be another person, can cause you great pain later.

6) Am I overlooking obvious negatives? Are you just looking for the positive aspects in the relationship and disregarding clear negatives? Are there bad habits, prejudices or behavior quirks you are denying exist? When a person is desperate to be in a relationship he/she might brush off otherwise offensive characteristics of the other. Are you really desperate?

7) Am I too in love to see clearly? Love is blind! That cliché exists for a reason…it’s true. In a Newsletter I wrote last year called “Love and the Brain” (http://aventurastressrelief.com/Newsletters.cfm), I explained how the brain’s chemistry changes when people fall in love. The early stage of this phenomenon is not the best time to make long term decisions. Wait for the dust to settle and you are thinking more clearly.

Building a lasting relationship is both an art and a science. Obviously people have to “feel” right together. Stepping back and evaluating what is really driving you can prove to be a very valuable exercise.

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Serious Love Relationships

There are many reasons for getting into a serious love relationship (marriage). I think most would agree that humans need and want love and companionship. Choosing a partner to fulfill that need over the long haul however can be tricky.

Strong chemistry between a man and a woman is a wonderful stimulant. It can be the driving force for making decisions about the future. But chemistry alone does not necessarily predict the success of a relationship. In fact it can cloud one’s thinking, especially if self knowledge is lacking.

When people are unaware of what really motivates them they are more likely to make errors in judgment about life partner choices. People are shaped emotionally by their early life experiences. Becoming aware of what emotional engine drives you can be quite valuable.

For example, if a person’s early family dynamics created an environment where feelings of insecurity and unpredictability prevailed, that person might become unreasonably jealous or insecure as an adult in a serious love relationship. Ironically, in fact, he might even choose a partner who makes him feel insecure because the feeling is familiar.

Understanding yourself and what you really need in a long term love relationship will help you increase your odds for finding the right partner. You may choose the wrong partner as a result of not realizing your tendency to want to recreate situations in which you can experience old familiar feelings.

For example, a family where conflict or disagreements were treated harshly, where anger and acrimony prevailed instead of respectful understanding or consideration of the other’s point of view, could produce a person who leaves or withdraws from a relationship at the first sign of conflict. That practice may have been the only defense available to him. However as an adult, that behavior can destroy a couple’s chance for intimacy to develop. How can a couple grow without working through the inevitable disagreements they will ultimately have?

Another example is a person whose family disappointed him by being unavailable emotionally when he needed them, creating doubt about the reliability of others. This doubt can translate into the inability to trust causing distance and insecurity between partners.

There are various examples of this type of partnering. Some would argue that partners choose each other to help them work out personal issues created during their childhood. In fact, a healthy relationship affords both partners a good opportunity for doing exactly that.

It may not be too late to examine the motivations that drove you into your relationship. When an individual realizes that he/she is in a serious love relationship (or marriage) that is not going well, and still has strong loving feelings for their partner, it is time to become introspective. It is also time to make personal changes; changes that might help resolve those nagging issues once and for all.

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Midlife Crisis

Midlife is a normal developmental stage that all men (if they are fortunate) get to experience. It is at this time, somewhere between 35-55 years of age, that both psychological as well as physiological (see preceding article) changes take place.

It is often at this time that a man begins to question what has been driving him. Has he been following his dream or has he been a slave to his job or career? Has he made the best choice for a life partner? Is he happy? Does he know himself?

To complicate matters it is at this time when a man comes face to face with the loss of his youth and the vitality that he once had. He can’t play basketball like he used to, he can’t run as fast, he may be heavier than just a few years ago, he may be losing his hair and he is not as attractive to “younger” women anymore.

These inevitable shifts in his reality are the unavoidable consequences of aging. Some men handle it well and others don’t. Those that don’t may experience a midlife crisis. Although a man may be more stable financially and socially than ever before, for some men this type of stability signals “old age” and it frightens them.

Midlife crisis, thus, is essentially a problem of psycho-social adjustment. It doesn’t necessarily have a bearing on a man’s sexual functioning. It is not synonymous with Andropause but there are frequently some male menopausal factors at play. It is driven by the perspective a man has about his midlife transition.

This can be a very difficult time for family and friends as well. The man in midlife crisis is often difficult to reach emotionally. He can become detached or irrational at times. He may fill up his time with seemingly superficial activities or become preoccupied with sex, mostly as a way of affirming his manhood.

Midlife is a time when a man’s early fantasies begin to crumble. It is the steady drip of reality, the awareness sinking into his brain that he is passing his peak; that he is no longer the “kid” or young man he was and he has to deal with it. This can be a time of liberation as he looks into the future or slavery as he mourns his past. Adjusting to this new reality is the challenge.

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