Now that the New Year is upon us, many of you will be making resolutions. It's common knowledge that most people fail at keeping their New Year resolutions, so what's an alternative to making resolutions?

First let's look at the main problem. New Year resolutions are the same as false hope syndrome and cultural procrastination. So why do people fail every year with their New Year's resolutions?

According to psychologists:

Peter Herman and his colleagues have identified what they call the "false hope syndrome," which means their resolution is significantly unrealistic and out of alignment with their internal view of themselves. This principle reflects that of making positive affirmations. When you make positive affirmations about yourself that you don't really believe, the positive affirmations not only don't work, they can be damaging to your self-worth.

The other aspect of failed resolutions lies in the cause and effect relationship. You may think that if you lose weight, or reduce your debts, or exercise more, your entire life will change, and when it doesn't, you may get discouraged and then you revert back to old behaviors.

Making resolutions revolve around changing behaviors. And changing behaviors means that your thinking will have to change. This involves making new neural pathways which can be quite difficult. Stopping a behavior rarely works. Instead, you have to create a new enjoyable neural pathway which changes the way your thinking works. This is the truly difficult challenge that causes most people to fail at keeping their New Year's resolutions.

So, try themes instead.

I gave up making New Year's resolutions many years ago. I've been using the idea of themes to change my life in radical ways for years. I got the idea from James Altucher. The reason that themes work for me is because it allows me to take many different paths, just like a roller coaster path, towards some amorphous, big area that needs constant improvement. By making it non-specific, I feel success instead of failure, if I work on one of my themes throughout the year.

So, here's an example from my own life to illustrate how themes work: I was a heavy drinker and definitely addicted to cigarettes for most of my adult life. I was sure I would probably die from one of these habits. But I never set goals to overcome these bad habits. I used themes.

The reason that goals don't work for me is that they are too specific and don't encompass the process of unraveling the core driver of the habit I want to change.

Setting goals for me is like setting up a failure timeline. I need space and room to understand my own issues, so setting a goal doesn't help me change. Life is chaotic, non-linear and much more like the way a river flows: haphazardly, wherever water can best go. Mainstream thought says you have to set goals to achieve them. Goals don't really work for me even though I've managed to overcome some really bad habits in my life.

I quit smoking and drinking a few years ago and I never set a goal to achieve those two behavior changes.

Instead, I used themes, but I never said "quitting smoking is my theme". The theme I focused on was "understanding my smoking and feelings of unhappiness".

I knew I had to change my neural pathways when I felt anxiety. I smoked when I felt anxious and I took this anxiety out on my lungs, in the form of smoking. I identified the main source of my anxiety: a job I hated and that wasn't a good fit for my personality. So then I quit that job after I had secured a different one.

Quitting my bad job got rid of my anxiety, which caused me to quit smoking.

So, do you see if I had just focused on "quitting smoking" I would have ended up in failure? The central, deeper problem that I was trying to fix with cigarettes was the fact that my job (selling cars) was not aligned with my core beliefs and was causing me massive suffering. Once I came to understand how not aligning myself with my core beliefs was damaging myself, I was able to make a change. And this job change led to me not needing to smoke anymore. Using themes allowed me to make bigger changes that I hadn't even fully understood.

Also, I began writing and creating art around the same time that I quit drinking. I began to do enjoyable things more and more, which took the place of drinking and smoking. It's not easy though. I allowed myself to mess up and I occasionally smoked even after I quit. I never got mad at myself for messing up. This is a normal part of rewiring neural pathways. But today, I don't smoke at all. I've changed the circuits in my brain and when I feel anxiety, I don't turn to cigarettes to seek relief. Now, I am just sort of stuck with my feelings, but at least I won't be killing myself with smoking and drinking anymore.

But I'm not a perfect, happy person.

One of my themes for 2017 is working on understanding my fear of commitment. Another theme for me is understanding what things create happiness and despair.

What are your themes for 2017?

If you're on Twitter, you can follow me: @stellabelle
I also have a YouTube channel, so if you're into watching somewhat odd videos, have a look. If you're on Linkedin, guess what, I'm there too, maybe you have a good idea we could implement?

My book, Un-Crap Your Life: Navigating Life's Crappiest Situations is available in ebook or paperback on Amazon.

I also co-authored the official Steemit 101 ebook that is available on Amazon for 99 cents.

Happy New Year Steemians!