By Elizabeth Scott, M.S.
Link: http://stress.about.com/od/programsandp ... soluts.htm
Dear YOYO folks,
Happy New Year! There must be something you'd like to achieve in this year. Let's talk about how to make your wish come true.
Every year, throngs of people—maybe even you—choose a list of resolutions for the next year. Generally, these are habits they will try to do every day, or habits they will try to avoid for as long as they can. Unfortunately, many of these resolutions are forgotten by March. A major reason for this is that it’s deceptively difficult to develop or deny ingrained habits ‘cold turkey’.
While the effort to adopt resolution shows a wonderful sense of positive intent, a better alternative is to develop new goals for the future. Goals are a better plan than resolutions for a few key reasons:
Rigid vs. Fluid:
Resolutions stay the same: “I will go to bed by 10pm.” “I will stop eating junk.” “I will go to the gym five times a week.” If these are somewhat big changes, it may feel like a huge change with no buildup. Goals, however, can be tackled in steps, beginning with baby steps and increasing in difficulty as you become more accustomed to the change. This makes goals more realistic for lasting change.
Sense of Accomplishment vs. Sense of Failure:
Goals give you a direction to aspire to, but with the baby steps you may be taking toward your goal, you can still feel like you’ve accomplished something and are on the right track, which will, in turn, keep you moving in the right direction. Once you’ve broken a rigid resolution, however, it’s easier to feel like a failure and give up.
The Scope of the Change:
Resolutions are usually a means to a goal, but if you find a resolution too difficult to stick to, it’s usually dropped and forgotten. With goals, if you find a planned change too difficult to carry out, you can drop that plan, but pick a different new behavior to try that will still lead to the same end result, and not lose sight of the goal. For example, imagine you want to get in the habit of exercising to be in better shape. You might make a resolution to go to the gym five times a week. But if you find that you just hate the gym, you probably won’t stick to your resolution, and you’ll be no closer to your goal. However, if you make ‘getting more exercise’ the goal, you may drop the gym, but switch to walking through your neighborhood each morning, and still meet your goal.
Now that you know some of why resolutions often fail and goals are a more realistic route, here are some tips for setting goals you can get behind:
Keep your future in mind.
Think of what you would have in your ideal life, and where you’d like to be in two, five, or even ten years, and see if your goals bring you closer to that picture. If so, they’re good goals to stick with. If you can keep in your mind the image of where you would ultimately like your goals to take you, it’s easier to stick with them.
Think in terms of broad changes rather than specific behaviors.
For instance, resolving to “Develop A Stress Management Practice” gives more room for growth and change than “Do Yoga Every Morning”. While you’ll want to put your broad goals into specific behaviors, deciding to Develop a Stress Management Practice gives you room to experiment, and allows you to change course if you find that Yoga isn’t working for you.
Think in terms of what you’d like to add to your life, rather than what you’d like to take away.
For example, instead of making the goal to “Eat Less Unhealthy Food”, focus on trying to “Eat More Healthy Food ”. You may subconsciously feel more deprived if you think of taking something away rather than adding something good, and if you replace unhealthy food in your diet with healthy food, the same goal is accomplished. Also, it’s usually easier to add a behavior than to stop a behavior.
Once you have your goals set, keep them in the forefront of your mind. Keep them listed in your day-planner, have them as part of your screen saver, or post-it them in prominent places around your house for a while. Reward yourself with something small for continuing to stick with it, until you make enough progress toward your goals that the progress becomes its own reward. And remember that change doesn’t come overnight, but as you work toward developing what is important to you, the change will come, and it will be lasting. Remember this, and enjoy building the life you were meant to live!
Suggested Questions for Session I :
1.Have you ever make new year wishes? Any successful story to achieve it and get what you wanted please share with us.
2.Every participant please take a minute to come up with 1~3 personal goals which is difficult but might possible to be achieved. Share with your table mates on how you will do it or group discuss for the solution
3.Please team work a different/creative/or even strange goal(small project) which you have never try before, yet can bring some value to ones life. Let us know how it can be fulfilled step by step. We will see which team got the most innovative mind. (Take it easy..this is not a test.)
4.What is your new year resolution?
Session II
In this session let's talk about some events which were happened recently. You can pick up any news around you but please do share with us on what your group discuss about.
Reference: http://www.theweek.co.uk/summary
Topics below are just for reference:
-Shanghai crush: Xi Jinping orders new year investigation
-AirAsia underwater search to begin
-Top Chinese diplomat being investigated for corruption
-Macau's gambling revenue hit with first annual fall
-Most cancer types 'just bad luck'
-Nasa to hack Mars rover Opportunity to fix 'amnesia' fault
-Paul McCartney: Beatles courses are 'ridiculous but flattering'
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Agenda:
3:45 ~ 4:00pm Greetings & Free Talk / Ordering Beverage or Meal / Getting Newcomer’s Information
4:00 ~ 4:10pm Opening Remarks / Newcomer’s Self-introduction / Grouping
(Session I)
4:10 ~ 4:50pm Discussion Session (40 mins)
4:50 ~ 5:10pm Summarization (20 mins)
5:10 ~ 5:15pm Regrouping / Instruction Giving / Taking a 10 Minutes Break (Intermission)
(Session II)
5:15 ~ 5:55pm Discussion Session (40 mins)
6:00 ~ 6:20pm Summarization (20 mins)
6:20 ~ 6:30pm Concluding Remarks / Announcements
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聚會日期：列於該貼文主題內
聚會時間：請準時 4:00 pm 到 ~ 約 6:30 pm 左右結束
星期六聚會地點：丹堤濟南店
地址、電話：台北市濟南路三段25號 地圖 (02) 2740-2350
捷運站：板南線 忠孝新生站 3 號出口
走法：出忠孝新生站 3 號出口後，沿著巷子(忠孝東路三段10巷)走約 2 分鐘，到了濟南路口，左轉走約 2 分鐘即可看到。
最低消費： 80 元
注意事項：
1. 文章是否需要列印請自行斟酌，但與會者請務必自行列印 Questions for discussion。
2. 與會者請先閱讀過文章，並仔細想過所有的問題，謝謝合作！
給新朋友的話：
1. 請事先準備2~3分鐘的英語自我介紹；會議結束前可能會請你發表1~2分鐘的感想。
2. 請事先閱讀文章以及主持人所提的討論問題，並事先寫下自己所欲發表意見的英文。
3. 全程以英語進行，參加者應具備中等英語會話能力，對任一討論問題，能夠以5到10句英文表達個人見解。
4. 在正式加入之前，可以先來觀摩三次，觀摩者亦須參與討論。正式加入需繳交終身會費 NT$1,000。