Making New Year’s Resolutions Stick (hint: Acupuncture Can Help)

Acupuncture for the New YearAcupuncture for the New Year

New Year, New You. That’s what they say, right? It’s only natural to look for neat little beginnings and endings in your life. It’s this desire to make sense of our world that makes the start of a new year feel so profound. On New Year’s Eve, you mull over the past year with some friends and some whiskey, and feel compelled by the clock to make proclamations about how you will change yourself/job/life in the coming year.

What you seek is happiness.

What you get is disappointment.

How can you expect to change who you are overnight? Yet at the stroke of midnight, the new year dawns and with it comes your promises of betterment. John Oliver said in this hilarious video that resolutions are “the exact middle ground between lying to yourself and lying to other people.” His satirical piece highlights the real truths that surround the overwhelmingly high failure rate of New Year’s Resolutions: They are unrealistic so you are doomed to failure.

Cheery post, I know. But wait! There is a way to change all this. There is a way to better yourself by making proclamations in January that will last throughout the year (and it is not done by lowering your expectations): Shift Your Focus.

Instead of focusing on the thing, the goal, the 50 lbs, the promotion, the quitting smoking — focus on the motivation. Why do you want to lose 50 lbs? And don’t say that it’s so you can look good in a swimsuit. Go deeper. Why do you want to look good in a swim suit? Do you want to fit in? Do you want acceptance? Do you want love? Look for the deeper motivation behind why you are seduced into making that particular resolution. This is especially helpful if you find yourself making the same resolution year after year. That deeper goal is your true resolution.

If you discover that the real reason you want to get a promotion/lose weight/read more books/etc. is so that you will finally feel worthy (of love/respect/praise/friends/etc), your real resolution is To Feel Worthy.

If you focus on the baseline desired feeling (self-worth) instead of a concrete outcome (lose 50 lbs), the concrete outcome will actually come more easily in the end. If you want to lose 50lbs because you think then you will finally love yourself, find ways to love yourself now, and it will be much easier for that happy well-adjusted person to lose 50 lbs than it will be for the person whose entire self-worth hinges on it. Make sense?

How to shift your focus? Other than really tracing back the desired feeling that is leading to the resolution, you need to get some acupuncture. I know that may sound like an illogical leap, but just trust me for a minute.

Acupuncture is an incredible form of bodywork that has an uncanny ability to help you shift your perspective.

Sounds just like what you need, right? There are all kinds of points on the body that I use not only to help people who have physical pain and imbalances, but also to help with getting you more in touch with yourself (bonus: it might be covered by your insurance). The physicality of the work makes you more self-aware, and often clues you into certain patterns that have been holding you back. It is not uncommon for patients to recognize connections between mental and/or emotional triggers and physical conditions/pain once they start getting acupuncture. This recognition also helps you move forward when you are looking to develop a better relationship with yourself.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine can also help you get out of pain, have less bloating, lose weight, sleep better, have a higher sex drive, get pregnant — basically it can help with all of the things, mental, physical, and emotional that are standing in the way of you and what you want in 2016.

Tell me your resolution for 2016, or schedule your free resolution consult, and I’ll let you know how acupuncture can help you meet your goals this year.

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