Writing Tools for New Year’s Resolutions

Writing is a powerful method for creating success in your New Year’s resolutions. Here are some specific tools:

1. Hate Play, Hearts Work
2. Affirmations
3. Goals

Each has a form: 1) daily and discarded,  2) posted, or 3) tucked away.

1. Daily, for discarding immediately: Hate Play, Hearts Work lets your trains of thought and feelings out onto paper. Keeping sentences short write about stress. Looking back over sentences, put hearts around good stuff, scribble out bad stuff, and when something gets a heart but then also seems bad, scribble that out. Even poke holes in the scribbled part if that feels right. Spend five to twenty minutes at it at about same time each day. Keeps your train of thought going for creativity and growth.
2. To post in a place where you’ll see it often: Affirmations are short positive sentences that seem believable to you. State affirmations on anything you want to accomplish, picking a small enough part that seems within reach. For example, instead of “I will find the right job” (which may make you feel cynical) write “I will find better and better ways of looking for the right job” (which may feel believable to you). Or instead of “I am losing weight” you might try “I am enjoying eating better, and weight is just dropping away at its own right pace.”
3. Write down a specific goal as if it is already here. Pick a time in the future: say, 3 months, 6 months, or one year from now. Elaborate on the goal as you imagine having accomplished it: how it feel, the consequences of it in your daily life, the effects upon your morale. For example, “This new job is interesting. People treat each other here with more dignity and comaradarie than at my previous job.” Or “Now that I have lost 20  pounds, I feel lighter, and the clothes I’m wearing feel better on my body. I seeing myself in the mirror more than I did when I was 20 pounds heavier.”

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