![\"Guilt\"](\"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Guilt.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSo here we are at the beginning of a new year.\u00a0 Whether you’ve made New Year\u2019s resolutions or have stated your intentions for the\u00a0New Year or have simply promised yourself that \u201cthis year is going to be different\u201d, we all know that things don\u2019t always go as planned.\u00a0 Just as we break promises to others, it can be easy to fall short of commitments we’ve made to ourselves.<\/p>\n
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We all know that creating new habits is a challenge.\u00a0 They say it takes at least 21 days of consistent effort to create new habits.\u00a0 If you fall off the wagon on your promise to stop drinking caffeine two days into it, what are you going to do?\u00a0 Are you going to give up and start drinking coffee again because it was a foolish idea to think you could do without it, or are you going to acknowledge the fact that you’ve been drinking coffee every day for the past 10 years and breaking that habit is bound to bring its share of challenges?<\/p>\n
We can set such high expectations for ourselves that when we don\u2019t meet them, we beat ourselves up.\u00a0 The reality is that punishing ourselves for our failures doesn’t provide any encouragement to get back on track.\u00a0 It leaves us feeling shitty about ourselves.\u00a0 Often, we indulge even more in the bad habits we\u2019re trying to rid ourselves of to make us feel better (I can\u2019t be the only one that eats some chocolate after missing a workout \u2013 might as well, right?).<\/p>\n
Instead of flogging ourselves for missteps, we need to learn how to be kinder and gentler to ourselves.\u00a0 Letting go of the habits that no longer serve us and creating new ones that do is a constant work in progress.\u00a0 Remind yourself that meaningful change doesn’t happen overnight.\u00a0 Focus on the reason why you want to release the habit \u2013 better health, more clarity, etc.\u00a0 Make sure that you\u2019re not making changes for anyone else but yourself.\u00a0 When we try to make changes because someone else wants us to, the motivation isn’t strong enough, and as the challenges rear their not-so-pretty head, it can be easy to resent those who asked us to change in the first place.<\/p>\n
Let go of the guilty feelings that can pop up as we struggle in our journey of self-improvement and awareness.\u00a0 Congratulate yourself on making a commitment to improve yourself.\u00a0 Remind yourself that the goal isn’t perfection, but rather progress, and you\u2019re tapping deeper and deeper every day into the greatness that has been there all the while!\u00a0\u2665<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So here we are at the beginning of a new year.\u00a0 Whether you’ve made New Year\u2019s resolutions or have stated your intentions for the\u00a0New Year or have simply promised yourself that \u201cthis year is going to be different\u201d, we all know that things don\u2019t always go as planned.\u00a0 Just as we break promises to others, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[561,293,606,576,174,607,608,347],"class_list":["post-1645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughtoftheday","tag-breaking-habits","tag-challenges","tag-expectations","tag-failure","tag-guilt","tag-habits","tag-meaningful-change","tag-new-years-resolutions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}