Empowering Yourself for a Stress-free New Year
The new year ushers in new resolutions and new opportunities, but too often our old habits and perennial stresses repeat the patterns of the years before.
This is inevitable when the same body and mindset carry forward the same habitual patterns that are simply perpetuated from one year to the next. Intellectual new year resolutions carry little chance of real change, unless directed by a part of self that can wrench itself free from these old patterns. The good news is that you have the ability to create within yourself an empowered director to lead you through a stress-free and fulfilling year ahead...
Conditions for Success
The first thing needed is the wish to change. Strength of will is needed to sustain new habits. While habitual pain and disappointment may force you to change, the thought of success and abundance can be an equally powerful motivator, as any champion will tell you. So ask yourself how much you (really) want this change.
The second thing needed is the ability to shine the torch on every part of yourself. Who are the fixed persona that are hidden inside of you, controlling your mind and behaviour? We need to recognise the parts of our personalities that keep us from experiencing our greater potential.
Once we have identified the cause of our limitations and are powerfully motivated to make the necessary changes, we then need a third condition: a specific wish that can deal with the old limiting factor, something like: I wish to overcome my sense of scarcity and trust that life is supportive and abundant.
Creating Internal Partnerships
And now, something begins that for some might be quite novel: creating a dynamic partnership or alliance with oneself. It is a great misconception to believe that we have a single identity. There are multiple characters on the internal stage of our psyches that play their roles on our life paths. Each will express different thoughts and feelings and behave in different manners at different times, causing our bodies to function differently at different times. When we are anxious, our bodies are tense, our breathing is shallow, our heart rate is accelerated, we are worried and think negatively, and the outlook for success, joy and abundance are significantly curtailed. Whereas confidence expresses itself with a relaxed body and mindset and an open-hearted, positive outlook, and the chance for success is far greater.
Discovering Empowerment
Once you have tapped into your motivator, your wise self explorer and your initiator, it is time to find the empowered character that will bring about the change you desire. For instance, a strong, confident and abundant part of yourself that will encourage and support the one who lives in scarcity. Just as you would play such a role in a staged drama, practising this role again and again until it becomes a natural part of the staged character, so this empowered figure becomes a natural part of your personality. You can even strike a pose holding the stance of an empowered person to imprint this position into your body.
Creating Abundance for the New Year
By creating powerful motivation for new resolutions, recognising the old repetitive patterns that hold you back and initiating the empowered character that can overcome the old blocks, you begin to activate your potential to take on a new role - not only of bringing change for success and abundance, but also of transforming habitual disappointment into sustained victory for the future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Raoul Goldberg has been working in integrative medicine for over 40 years. He currently practises at the Path to Health Integrative Medicine Clinic in Constantia, Cape Town. For more information, visit www.pathtohealth.co.za.
