The phrase “New Year, New Me” was quite popular some years back, although I suppose the new generation has found new ways to express it. Generally, it would hinge on the idea or list of ideals that one wishes to adopt in the new year or goals to be achieved in the 365 days. But for all the excitement it begins with, it takes a couple of weeks, maybe months for some, before people begin to realize that the New Year does not change who you are intrinsically.
In “The Secrets of Mind Power” by William Walker Atkinson, one can find a lot of helpful principles and techniques on how to apply the mind power to achieve anything. I highly recommend the book, and for the New Year resolutions, I’ll dwell on two of the lessons he shared.
Develop Willpower and Concentration
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You will never achieve anything worthwhile until you develop a single-minded ability to focus on one thing and block out distractions. You must consciously train your mind to focus on your goals and overcome distractions. Strengthen your willpower to stay on track in the face of challenges and setbacks.
Sometimes, you will be battling with some unconscious but deeply ingrained habits. For instance, some persons hardly achieve 50% of their daily to-do lists because of tiny (or major) distractions now and then. A statistic says the average person checks his phone once every 10 to 12 minutes. This could translate to almost 100 times a person randomly picks up his phone in a day. If every time such a person picks up his phone, he uses it for about 2 minutes; then we might be looking at about 3+ hours of unaccounted time in the day. Let’s not talk about the times you think about the phone, even when you are not with it.
The mind is not a switch. You can hardly go from thinking about one thing to another just like that. It takes conscientious training and willpower to get the mind to concentrate on a thing and block out other things. And if you can get this right, you can get many other things to fall in line.
Achieve Success through Harmony
True success goes beyond material gains. It covers every aspect of your life and gives that balanced life that incorporates physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. You cannot single out one area of your life to succeed and decide to ignore the others. Let me give an instance.
If you have decided that 2024 is the year you want to get a higher-paying job role, is it okay to fix your target of sending out as many applications as possible? Maybe not. You can succeed in this direction by seeing how every other aspect can work towards this single goal. A self-development goal, for instance – Do you need to take a new course or skill to improve your chances? Do you need to do a leadership course? Social network goals like – do you need to attend more professional events and meet more people in your industry of choice? Do you need to begin to dress the part?
When you look at it holistically like this, you see that no part of your life is isolated from the others. You need success in some areas to achieve success in other areas, and the sooner you begin to connect the dots, the better for you.
Conclusion
I deliberately choose to leave out things like affirmation, positive thinking, visualization, and self-suggestion because I think a lot is being said about those already. Try these out and see how much difference it makes. Your mindpower can do more for you than you know once you learn to harness and focus it.
In addition, I think your resolutions need not dwell so much on what you want to achieve or gain but on who you want to become. That is how to harmonize all aspects of your life towards the goal.
Happy New Year to you all.