New Year Resolutions, why don’t mine work?

Hi I’m Phil Smith, 

I’m a counsellor, hypnotherapist and nlp coach. Happy new year to you all..

So it’s THAT time of year! The part where, full of hope and motivation, we set exciting goals for ourselves for the year ahead, only to find ourselves flat on our arses come spring! Some people don’t even bother, because they believe it’s pointless. “It’s that new year, new me bullshit again” I hear them cry on social media!

 But WHY does this happen?  

 The short answer is this: You may be unclear about WHO you are, WHAT you want and there are SUBCONSCIOUS blocks sabotaging you…

Let’s start by noting it’s healthy to want to better ourselves and the beginning of a new year is a great time to do it. Start as you mean to go on. To start with, setting goals needs to be based on a clear sense of WHO we are and WHAT we want. After that, it’s a case of removing the subconscious blocks. So let's start at the beginning and think about who we are. Then we’ll move onto what we want, what blocks us and finally, how to remove it.

 Core values (who we are)

Core values are the things that are most important to us, like Peace, Freedom, Tranquillity, Excitement and Love - to give a few examples. Notice how these are all Feelings. A good start to understanding your core values is to at what hurts you or makes you angry. For example, if Truth and Respect are core values of yours, when someone lies to you, you’ll feel a strong negative emotion. Likewise, when someone tells you a difficult Truth you will feel a strong positive emotion and a deep connection to them. Understanding our core values gives us a clear insight into who we are and what motivates us. This is what gives us a strong WHY to fuel us. If we base our GOALS around our CORE VALUES, we will be tapped into our life-force energy! 

(Internet search core values exercise to find one that suits you)

 

Goals (what we want)

Goals can be oriented towards key areas of our  lives, such as FAMILY , ADVENTURE, HEALTH, FITNESS, FINANCES etc. A good way to identify your key areas of life is to make a wheel and divide it up into sections, like a pie. Label each section according to the key areas of your life. Once you’ve done that, mark your level of satisfaction from 0-10 around the wheel, the centre being 0 and the outside being 10. Then join the dots. The metaphor here is that your life will be functioning as well as this wheel would be. When Creating your wheel and setting your goals, think about WHAT'S important to you (your core values). This will personalise your goals. And don’t be afraid to use your imagination, the positive emotion you create when visualising your life ahead will be your anchor and driver. Think about HOW it will feel and WHAT it will look like, play with this, enjoy it. 

After the core values and wheel of life exercises, you should have a better idea of what’s important to you and what you want. Great! Now it’s time to set goals for each of the key areas. 

Next to your wheel, make a column for each key life area and in it,  list your goals for each one. After setting your goals for each of your key life areas, take a look at each area and ask yourself WHAT DO I NEED TO DO DIFFERENTLY TO ACHIEVE THIS GOAL?’ And don’t worry if the answers don’t come straight away, reflect and give yourself time for the answers to come, on some level YOU DO KNOW! When those insights come, write them down in the column for each area. This is your HOW. You might find that the same answers come up for more than one area, this is insightful because you start to raise your awareness of how your behaviour affects multiple areas of your life!

For some of you, setting intentions might have already become a deep, intuitive process . That’s great, you’re advanced! For you, a fresh look at your values and goals can always continue to raise your awareness of yourself. Remember, it’s always work in process. 

(Internet search wheel of life) 

 

Subconscious blocks (what’s sabotaging us)

Ok now for the deep bit, yes it gets deeper. I didn’t say it was going to be easy! 

So we set all these goals only to find ourselves falling back into the same old patterns. WHY? Two words - SUBCONSCIOUS PROGRAMMING 

WHAT is that? Well it’s the subconscious behaviours, beliefs and emotions, often rooted in childhood, that became habitual and therefore subconscious. These programs always override our conscious intent because the are very well established and often driven by something very very strong - EMOTION 

THE STRONGER THE EMOTION THE STRONGER THE PROGRAMME. So how does a subconscious programme get there? The same way anything becomes habitual, through EXPERIENCE and REPETITION. We have experiences (often in early childhood but not limited to) that contravene our Core values. This creates negative emotions. The bigger the experience the bigger the emotions. Emotions like fear, anger, sadness, hurt guilt and shame. These are often referred to as Core wounds or childhood traumas. At the time of experiencing them we aren’t able to process these emotions so we have to repress them. Then we need to make sense of them, so we come to the conclusion that our experiences must have been because there’s something wrong with us, this is called internalising. The conclusions we come to are called Core Beliefs. Core beliefs are statements like I’m not good enough, I’m not lovable, I’m not capable, I’m stupid, I’m bad, I’m ugly. Now the fun doesn’t end there, because we now have a strong emotion fuelling a strong belief. Now we need to find ways of coping with all of that, so we start doing things to counteract or avoid these beliefs and emotions, these are called Coping strategies. Coping strategies are behaviours like people pleasing, self sabotage, avoidance, and can later become addictions and self harm (to name but a few). Coping strategies can be very specific to us and over time we add more of them, coping strategies upon coping strategies - all with the purpose of controlling our environment, beliefs and emotions. 

So now we have a set of behaviours and a core belief fueled by a strong emotion that’s rooted in childhood experiences. Once this process is repeated for a while it becomes a subconscious program. After that it runs our lives automatically. Getting in the way or our adult conscious intentions. More specifically, hijacking our new year’s resolutions.

How do we change them?

The start of change is Awareness. We have to deepen our self-awareness and start bringing subconscious programs into conscious awareness. The way we do this is with self reflective questions. Self reflective questions all start with What? When? Who? Where? and How? In NLP using questions to dive down into the subconscious is called Chunking Down. So we need to ask ourselves questions to dig down into the programmes. 

The other part of Chunking Down into the subconscious programs is relaxation. When we are relaxed we are more connected to the subconscious. This tends to be first thing in the morning or last thing at night, but we can get into a relaxed state any time we want. It;s basic brain wave states, which is a longer conversation but just try to think of it as - The more relaxed you are the lower the brainwave state, the lower the brainwave state the more accessible the subconscious is. Breathing exercises, time in nature, meditating and self care are good examples of inducing a relaxed state. There are some fantastic guided meditation free on YouTube that work great. If you combine questions with relaxation, you’ll get insights.

Self Reintegration (a model for change) accesses these subconscious programmes by asking five core questions. We can then reverse engineer them if we want to dig down/go back in time. These questions are:

What happened? (childhood or past experiences)

How did it feel? (negative emotions) 

What did I decide that it meant? (core beliefs) 

What did I start doing because of it? (Coping strategies)

How is it affecting my life now? (the results of this behaviour now)

This is going from the root to the ‘now manifestation’ of the programme. But this process can be reversed to start with the now, going down deeper into the root. So it would look more like this:

What behaviours are sabotaging my life? 

When did I start doing that?

What must I believe about myself?

What emotions are underneath that belief? 

What did I go through? 

Once you have identified a behaviour, a belief and an emotion, you can start to raise your awareness of this programme and the process of change has already begun. To complete the shift the emotion has to be released. In Self Reintegration the emotion at the core of the programme is referred to as the ‘glue’ that holds it together. Release the emotion - break the programme.

 

Releasing emotion

Here are some processes to help you release the emotions you discover. One is for softer emotions like sadness, guilt, hurt and shame and one is specifically for anger. Think about the context in which you experienced the emotions. Was it Loss? Was it Mum? Was it Dad? Was it Abandonment? Was it Betrayal? Becoming aware of the Who or What will help you identify your specific perspective at the time the emotions were created. 

To release soft emotions like sadness, hurt, guilt and shame:

Identify the context and time - What happened?

Then identify the emotions and locate the biggest one - How did it feel?

Once you have the emotion, notice where in your body you feel it. 

Focus on the emotion and breath into it.

As you breath into it, allow it to expand. Don’t worry, it will be uncomfortable but it will not hurt you. Allow yourself to feel the emotion to the extent you can, but push yourself a bit. Getting uncomfortable is necessary. Breath through the emotion and allow it to expand and move through you, using your breath as a stabiliser. Eventually it will start to dissipate, it may or may not produce tears but if it does allow that to happen. Once it settles down, focus your attention on your HEART and  think of someone or something that makes you feel a positive emotion, like Love, Excitement, Peace or Gratitude. Allow that positive emotion to expand in your heart and to continue to expand into the rest of your body and even further if you can. Imagine the energy reaching out and touching others. Finally, when you feel a higher internal state, come back into the now and for the next few days make some notes about any changes you notice. This process can be repeated until there is significant emotional change. Well done, you have just done some very significant core change work! 

Anger:

Anger is a little different to the softer emotions in that it's a stimulating emotion, as is fear. The purpose of anger is to express your point of view. To express to someone how they made you feel. You hurt me, then my anger fuels me to express my pain and to tell you what you did. Anger is a very vocal, physical emotion, therefore expressing it through voice and the body is important. Often we release anger and uncover softer emotions underneath. Anger is one of the most highly repressed emotions because of the cultural association we have to it. It’s seen as violent or aggressive (expressed in an unhealthy way it can be). Nobody wants to be angry! The important thing to understand is that we must find NON-HARMFUL ways of expressing anger. Here is a process: 

Find a safe place that is isolated from anyone else where you cannot harm anyone, including yourself! 

Think about who or what you are angry with - remember it could be highly repressed! 

Once you have identified who or what, Imagine that person or situation was in front of you.

Now, allowing all of the anger to come through, say exactly what you wanted to say but didn’t get to say. Don’t hold back, express all of the obscenity and darkness that wants to come through, don’t hold back. Once you have let it all out go home and get some rest! Now allow space for any hurt or sadness that wants to come through afterwards. Well done, you have just released some Anger! Did what came out surprise you? 

 

(A side note to this if you're working with complex trauma. You may need to seek out the help of a Therapist before trying the emotional release processes. Equally, if you're having trouble identifying or shifting your repressed emotions and core beliefs, find a therapist, like myself, who knows how to work with core wounds)

(Some good resources for understanding repressed emotions are, Brene Brown, Gabor Mate and Joe Dispenza. A quick internet/social media search will bring up their material plus more)

 

Wishing you a transformational New Year, 

With love and gratitude,

Phil