This year I made several New Year resoluitions that can roughly be lumped into the category of feeling better in mind, body, and spirit. It’s been an interesting last couple of years. In fact, one clairvoient friend told me that there are three extradimensional entities camping out in my front yard that have been messing with me. Hmmm… not totally sure about that one, but I can tell you for sure that feeling better in mind, body, and spirit is a pretty tall order even if you just limit yourself to this dimension.

Maybe you’ve set different resolutions to lose weight or to start eating right or whatever. Let me take just a second to tell you why you are likely to not keep that resolution and what you can do about it. I’m going to use myself as an example. The problem is that a resolution like “feel better in mind body and spirit” is something that is difficult to achieve because it’s not exactly clear what it is. You can’t hit a target if someone says, “It’s somewhere over there.” They’ve got to show you the target and say, “Hit that target right there.” If you are overweight or you don’t feel good, then the chances are that you are accustomed to daily defeats. In other words, you probably tell yourself on a fairly regular basis something like, “I need to lose this weight.” The implication is that you haven’t lost all the weight so you psychologically experience a daily defeat. If you get enough of these daily defeats related to your New Year resolution, then you will simply give up because you start thinking you can’t do it.

The secret is to turn this around so that you can experience daily successes instead of daily defeats. You can do that be doing three simple things.

First, turn lofty goals into things that you can easily say… did I achieve this or not. For example, “feel better in body” can be turned into “lose 20 pounds and make my knees stop hurting.” Those are things that you can easily say yes I did it or no I didn’t.

Second, develop micro resolutions. You still have pretty lofty resolutions, even when you have changed your resolutions into something like “Lose 20 pounds.”  What are you going to do to actually do that? Micro resolutions are easily achieved, very specific actions. So, when it comes to losing the 20 pounds the first micro-resoution is to eat in a way that stabilizes blood glucose… and that’s easily done by eating the Vitalogy recipies that ensure proteins, fats, and carbs are eaten in the right porportions. Once that is done, then the next micro resolution is to eat in the portion sizes that will lose weight. And to make the body feel better, the micro resolution is to do Vitalogy exercises every day. Small stuff.

Third, make commitments. If you are familiar with goal setting you will probably think of the resolutions and micro resolutions as goals and tasks. Those words may make sense when talking about a business thing, but they are much too weak in personal resolutions. It’s not such a big deal to not quite achieve a goal. On the other hand, it’s a darn big deal to miss a written commitment that you make to someone you care about. So, in my case I have made written commitments to my wife about my micro resolutions.

How does this work. Well, in a word, fabulous. Since January 1 I have kept the commitment to do Vitalogy every day… The only day I missed was the one driving from Washington DC to Atlanta. I’ve also kept the resolution to eat to keep the blood glucose balanced. Just these two small things are causing huge shifts in the way I feel in the body. Remember that physiological shifts cause shifts if thought and focus… That’s happening too.