Thich Nhat Hhan final ceremony and cremation live on youtube.com
https://youtu.be/IHYCibNJV2E
Thich Nhat Hhan final ceremony and cremation live on youtube.com
https://youtu.be/IHYCibNJV2E
It's the end of the year and, for many of us, that means we have a few New Year's resolutions. They might be exercising more often, eating healthier food, spending less time on Facebook and Instagram, or finally starting that meditation practice. But here's the problem. Resolutions quickly fade. By the time February or March comes, we can easily forget all those well-intentioned resolutions. Habits, on the other hand, are sticky. The reason? Habits are automatic. We don't have to think about doing them. They just sort of happen, operating in the background of everyday life. So the key to making all those New Year's resolutions stick is simply this: turning them into regular, daily, habits. What's the best way to do that? Here are five strategies drawn from an emerging body of research on habit formation.
1.) Stack your new habits on top of existing habits. Habit expert James Clear calls this technique "habit stacking." It's the idea that we increase our likelihood of building a new habit by tethering it to an existing habit. For example, let's say you want to build the habit of meditating for five minutes each day. One way to build this habit would be to say to yourself, "I'm going to try to meditate for five minutes each day." A better way would be to stack it on top of an existing habit, to say to yourself, "After I brush my teeth each morning, I will meditate for five minutes."6.) You've probably heard the standard advice about making New Year's resolutions stick, make them realistic, and make yourself accountable to others. You might have even heard of the acronym SMART, which represents the gold standard of goal achievement, i.e., making resolutions specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. What often is missing is how to implement these principles in setting goals for the new year, which represents the gold standard of goal achievement, i.e., making resolutions specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Without these strategies, the sad fact is that most New Year's resolutions fail. I used to be a member of a gym in my hometown. And I remember how, during the first three weeks of January, the classes filled to capacity with newcomers eager to build the habit of doing losing weight or becoming healthier. By the end of January, however, most of them were gone. The gym returned to the group of regulars who had always been there. The New Year's resolution crew had disappeared.
The bad news is that this is the way it generally goes with New Year's resolutions. The good news is that, if you can turn these resolutions into habits, they will slowly shift from requiring enormous amounts of motivation and will to becoming automatic daily rituals that stick with you throughout the rest of the year.