Women hardly have a monopoly on making New Year’s resolutions, but chances are the type of resolutions they make may be different from those of men.
“There are more women who are focused and who commit [to making changes] than there are men,” said Candy Gellineau, a personal coach in River Forest who assists people trying to make changes year round.
Gellineau finds that women who seek her help “are typically more openly concerned” about finding ways to build and solidify relationships while men initially present concerns about improving careers and business.
Jane Flagello, a personal coach in Naperville, said she doesn’t notice gender differences, saying both men and women want healthy relationships and meaningful lives.
But men and women differ when it comes to making changes, Flagello said.
“Men are more methodical, step-by-step action-oriented, while many women take a longer approach and want to talk things out more,” she said.
Many people find investing in a personal coach improves their odds for making a change, because a coach helps them define their goals and the means to accomplish them.
That’s not the only way to go, however, if you are overwhelmed by the sickening feeling that you made the same New Year’s resolutions last year and the year before with no results.
Charles Stuart Platkin, a writer, researcher, lecturer, and founder of a weight-loss program knows just how you feel. He once was almost 50 pounds overweight, and he was going from one bad relationship to another. He managed to change that: He lost weight and found his soul mate.
“New Year’s is a trigger time, when people are more aware of the opportunity to change,” said Platkin, author of “Breaking the Pattern: The 5 Principles You Need to Remodel Your Life” (Red Mill Press, $24.95).
“We’re serious about the things we want to change,” he said. “But we don’t really think it through. We think willpower and discipline are going to carry us through to allow change to take place. But most of the time it just doesn’t happen.”
overwhelmed by the sickening feeling that you made the same New Year’s resolutions last year and the year before with no results.
Charles Stuart Platkin, a writer, researcher, lecturer and founder of a weight-loss program, knows just how you feel. He once was almost 50 pounds overweight, and he was going from one bad relationship to another. He managed to change that: He lost weight and found his soul mate.
“New Year’s is a trigger time, when people are more aware of the opportunity to change,” said Platkin, author of “Breaking the Pattern: The 5 Principles You Need to Remodel Your Life” (Red Mill Press, $24.95).
“We’re serious about the things we want to change,” he said. “But we don’t really think it through. We think willpower and discipline are going to carry us through to allow change to take place. But most of the time it just doesn’t happen.”
Platkin has some tips for making resolutions that you might actually be able to keep:
For starters, define your goal very specifically. That means instead of just vowing to lose weight, for example, decide that you want to lose 20 pounds in six months’ time. Then figure out exactly how you are going to do that. That means computing the number of calories you must cut from your diet daily and how much exercise you need to incorporate into your lifestyle.
But make sure you’ll like whatever means you’ve chosen to accomplish your objective. Otherwise, you won’t be motivated.
“Many people will pick jogging as a means of losing weight or a diet plan that you only eat green leaves,” Platkin said. “If you don’t like that and it’s not a part of your life, well, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
“If you want to spend more time with your family and so you say every weekend you’re going to go on a picnic or to a museum and you hate picnics and museums, that’s not going to be a motivating force to help you sustain your goal.”
Be realistic about what you will be able to achieve. Losing 20 pounds in a week or becoming the head of a Fortune 500 company within six months are not goals most people could achieve.
“If you want to spend more time with your family, it may not be [realistic] to say you’re quitting your job for five years,” Platkin said. “It might be [something like] figuring out how to leave work early one day a week. That’s achievable.”
Understand why exactly you want to change. What’s the reward?
A young man once approached Platkin after a lecture and asked him to help him quit smoking. Platkin told him: “I can’t help you. You have to help yourself. But tell me why you’re going to quit.”
The man cited the obvious one, his health, but then treated Platkin to a monologue. He was concerned about how secondhand smoke would affect his twins and the likelihood they would end up smokers because he was one.
Platkin then told him his real reason for wanting to quit smoking was his children, rather than his health.
“Every time he had a craving for a cigarette, on the one hand he had his health and on the other the relaxation a cigarette offered, except that the harm outweighed the benefit. His decision was easy: Smoke. Now he has a micro-choice, which is clearer to him: His twins or smoking. That’s what people need to identify.”
Keeping your eye on the reward makes it easier to stay the course if there’s a roadblock, Platkin said.
Lastly, take time to anticipate problems and devise tactics to prevent setbacks.
For example, if co-workers bring in doughnuts every Friday morning and you’re trying to lose weight, Platkin recommends either avoiding the situation by arriving later or staying away from the coffeepot or bringing in a healthy substitute you enjoy eating.
Does it all sound too complicated?
“When I give people all the information, they often say, `Can’t you just tell me what to do and I’ll do it?’ Well, you can’t follow something exactly; this is not a prescription. This is about looking and examining on your own and trying to determine what will work for you and what won’t work for you. Each person is unique.”
Platkin said he was initially horrified by all the goal-setting talk he found in the psychological and behavioral research that underpins his book. He discovered the material while researching a magazine article about how people often cannot change their behavior despite all the gurus, psychologists, psychiatrists and medications available to them.
“At the time I was overweight and had horrible relationships,” he said. “I had a host of issues.”
He wrote a draft of his book, but he still had not changed, even though he tried to summon all his willpower to do so.
So he tested all the information he had gathered himself. As a result, he lost weight, started a weight-loss counseling program and then set up group of dietitians and physicians to test the program as well. Then he rewrote the book, which draws generously from his own experiences and includes many written exercises that apply to any kind of change, not only weight loss.
