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New Years is almost upon us and many of us will be contemplating our resolutions for 2010. Although a lot of people don’t see them through (and some don’t even really expect to), there is some good news for those looking to make some changes for the coming year. Professor John Norcross of the University of Scranton conducted research that demonstrated that people who make resolutions are actually ten times more likely to successfully change their behaviours than those who do not. A lot of people actually DO achieve their goals of quitting smoking, losing weight and exercising more. “Resolutions deserve a little more respect,” he says. “These people are taking on serious health problems, and many of them do succeed.”
There are some simple steps you can take to dramatically increase your chances of sticking to New Years resolutions.
Get clear about what you want to do. “Exercise more” is a worthwhile aim but expressed like this it is just a vague intention – it needs to be something specific if you are going to follow through with it. What form of exercise are you going to do and when are you going to do it? How will you monitor how you are travelling with this – for instance will you keep a mini-exercise diary? Its best to be realistic about what you are wanting to achieve too as the chance to compete at the Olympics has probably already passed most of us by:) There is a saying that “good enough is not good enough” but quite often, it is.
Make the change in your mind before you make it in reality. Before you take the plunge and start to action your change (and I wouldn’t get too hung up on it being exactly on January 1st – do it when you’re ready) spend time thinking through what you are going to do. If you are going to “give up” something, continue to indulge but really concentrate on the damage that the cigarette, the junk food, the laziness or the compulsive shopping is doing to you. Now spend some time visualizing yourself achieving your goal, being a healthy non-smoker, someone who is in control of their eating, a willing exerciser a sound financial manager. Do this until you are impatient to begin the change rather than seeing it as something that, regrettably, HAS to be done.
Put the support structures in place. There are a number of things you can do to help make it easier for you and a great one is to tell other people what you are trying to do. Ask other people to help you out by maybe not smoking in front of you, not inviting you out on shopping trips, come and exercise with you and encourage you rather than doing that “roll eyes” thing. Some people also use visual reminders like sticking a picture of someone with the “ideal” body shape on the door to the refrigerator (“if you want to look THIS then stay out of HERE”!)
Allow yourself a little leeway. There are people who groove on self-denial – I am not one of them. For goals like stopping smoking there can’t be a half-way house, the ban has to be total, but in a lot of cases you don’t have to have a total ban and “letting off a bit of steam” from time to time can help your chances of succeeding in the long run. Allowing yourself to eat what you want one day a week, relaxing all day at home, allowing yourself to spend a certain amount of money shopping – these can all make sticking to a New Year’s resolution that bit easier and, here’s the real kicker, once your new healthier behaviours have become habitual, you might not even want to have a “day off”.
Do something you don’t want to do. Even with careful planning, support, rewards etc there are numerous times when you just won’t want to be bothered carrying on. I can’t think of a way around this – sometimes, as Wayne Bennett says, you’re just going to have to do what you don’t want to do. Eventually all of these small, uncomfortable but correct decisions do add up to big results.
So, don’t buy into that cynical view that these things never work. Follow these steps and by this time in 2010 you can be among the many people who HAVE made a positive change to their life.

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I’ve lived in Perth for seven years now and Christmas continues to be a strange affair for someone brought up in the UK. I thought I’d jot down a few observations to give you a flavour of what it is like over here.

The first obvious point to be made is that the weather is hugely different to what the British expatriate is used to. By the time Christmas Day comes around it is very hot – a few years ago it was well over 40 degrees C for 4 consecutive days over Christmas. This takes some getting used to, especially as most of the Xmas decorations in Australia follow the same “wintry” theme as they do in the UK. It can be a slightly surreal experience to go into an air conditioned shopping centre to escape the heat and be regaled by “Frosty the Snowman” and fake icicles displayed in the shop windows. For many of us blistering hot weather at Christmas will never seem right but I suppose you never heard Jesus complaining about it

Following on from the weather, the food people eat is different. There are a few hardy souls (like me) who persevere with a traditional turkey lunch despite the sweltering heat but a lot of people opt for the barbecue. The big advantage of the BBQ being, of course, that outdoor cooking doesn’t heat your house up whereas having the oven on for three hours definitely does. I’ve heard English people talk about “BBQ’s on the beach on Christmas Day” – but this seems to be one of those urban myths. I’ve never seen it happen and my wife (who is Australian) has never heard of it either. It also seems that prawns are part of the Christmas tradition here – I remember Coles supermarket running adverts along the lines of “what would Christmas be without prawns?” A question that would leave many ex-pats scratching their heads.

As far as shopping and preparing for the big day goes, I don’t have that many people to buy for over here so that makes things a bit less frantic. I send back cards, calendars etc through the post and its easy to order stuff from www.amazon.co.uk and get it delivered to addresses in the UK. Overall, Christmas shopping is less manic than it is in the UK and I find that the whole experience is less “full on”. One exception to this rule though is external Christmas-lights decorations on houses. This is an area where the West Australians “go for broke” and I’m sure some fully decorated houses are actually visible from space!

I guess the day itself goes much like it does in other places. A lot of people visiting family, a lot of eating, drinking and clearing up afterwards. Much of it conducted in back garden areas – if you drive around on Christmas day this can give the place an odd “deserted” feel. The absence of family life can hit ex-pats pretty hard at this time of year and its something that I feel a bit uncomfortable about from time to time. A rushed phone call at an odd time of the day isn’t much of substitute for having your family around you at this time of year. The only advice I could offer is not to “feed” the homesickness and to try to enjoy what “is” instead of concentrating on what it isn’t.

Unlike the UK, the long school holidays are in December / January and a lot of people in Perth take a holiday “down south” in the Margaret River area. This is the south-west area below Perth that’s famous for its lush, green countryside and outstanding beaches. Come Boxing Day, its like a modern day Gold Rush as hoards of people pack up their caravans, boats, camping gear etcetera and all head south on the same roads at the same time. Before I knew better I once went to visit friends in Mandurah on Boxing Day and it took about four hours to get there (usually takes one hour). Margaret River is a beautiful spot but it probably benefits from the fact that, because Perth is so remote, it’s the “only game in town” so it does get very busy. Wonderful place though.

Because a lot of people go on family holidays at this time, January is a very quiet time in Perth. Basically, it shuts down until after the Australia Day holiday on January 26th. This is nice and relaxing if you are on holiday too but it can get frustrating if you are at work and/or wanting to get something done as there is no-one around to do it. Having said that, there are always enough people around to turn the January sales into bedlam!

So, in some ways it’s very different over here. I realize that our ideas of what Christmas “should” be are very much a product of our childhoods and I wonder if my son, when he has grown up, will be nostalgic for palm trees and prawns on Christmas Day?

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A couple of weekends ago me and my wife had a near perfect Sunday. We had decided to make time for a photography trip down to Dunsborough here in West Australia, specifically to get some shots of Sugarloaf Rock but the beauty of the countryside down there is such that you can’t help but stumble upon other opportunities as well. You can wander around down there, camera in hand, and the World just seems to open up in front of you. All you have to do is click click click.

We loaded up the truck (or “Ute” to use the correct Australian term) with all the gear, got fuelled up and hit the road by about 7am. It takes about 3 hours to get to where we were going and it was the most beautiful, bright spring day – sunny but also windy with a bit of cold bite in the air. Its easy driving down south at this time of year and the scenery makes it a pleasant way to pass the time. There are a couple of strange landmarks we always pass that I keep an eye out for too, like the roadside shop that sells “emu pies”, the winery that seems to specialize in “mango wine” (fancy combining the two!) and not forgetting the strangely named “Abba River”.

We got past Dunsborough and out west to Cape Naturaliste by mid morning and then parked up and had a walk around a couple of the nature trails. There was quite a trace of wood smoke in the air because November/December is when a lot of “burning off” of vegetation is done to create fire-breaks and make things safer during the spring. It might seem a bit counter-intuitive to start fires in order to make things safer but it works.

As we wandered around I noticed a gleam in the bush around the paths and, on closer inspection; we found that it was the sun shining onto the front fenders of two ancient car wrecks. Judging by the body shapes they date back to at least the 70’s and maybe even the 60’s and if you look how far the wheels have sunk into the sand it looks like they have rested beside the seaside for a long, long time.

Anyway they presented us with an unexpected opportunity for some photos which (I hope) have captured some of the contrasts between the manufactured and the natural, the rusted metal and fresh spring flowers and so on.

Sugarloaf Rock was what we expected it to be and more besides. The sight of it rising up behind the rocky beaches and booming surf was awesome in the literal sense of the word. You just stop what you are doing a go “oh…wow!” With the sky and the sea being so clear and all-encompassing you wonder just how much “blue” you can fit in your head at one time! We happily spent a couple of hours clambering over the rocks trying to do justice to it all before breaking for lunch.

That Sunday was one of those days when you are totally absorbed in what you are doing to the complete exclusion of everything else. You lose all track of time and forget all about your cares and worries and just get lost in the flow of it. Here are a couple of examples of how this can effect you : if you work in an office you may routinely keep thinking that you are hungry or thirsty or “need a coffee” – chances are that you don’t and you are just bored and looking for a distraction. If you are doing what you REALLY should be doing you might go for hours without noticing hunger or wanting a coffee. If (like me) you run on a treadmill at the gym you might be constantly noticing small aches, pains, possible muscle strains etc but if you are scampering over rocks for hours, putting FAR more strain on your legs, you might not notice a damn thing. As I found out to my cost later

The wonderful thing about doing the landscape photography is that it takes something that is enjoyable anyway (taking a pleasant trip to the country) and improves it by adding a purpose to it. Enjoying, discovering, sharing, creating –this is the pure good stuff. Don’t over-complicate it, just do more of it! After all, this is the ultimate purpose of all good self help stuff – be happy doing what you’re doing.

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Recently I gave up caffeine – almost by accident – I’ll tell you how it went in case you are also looking to make a change here. Recently I went to the Doctors (something I am normally reluctant to do) as I had a pain in my back, about where your kidneys are, and also felt light-headed and lethargic. The Doctor sent me away for blood tests etc so in the meantime I decided to cut right down on caffeine and drink more water. I figured that if my kidneys were struggling then it would be a good idea to help flush them out by swapping the coffee and tea for water – at least until I got my results back. I resolved to limit myself to two cups a day (down from between eight to ten a day). Anyway, a week passed and it turned out that my kidneys were fine and I felt fine as well. By that time I thought that as I had already gone a week with next-to-no caffeine I might as well persevere with it and see how things went.

The first thing I found is that my first cup of tea on a morning would be really hard to give up so, at time of writing, I now have one caffeinated drink a day and that is with breakfast.

Actually going through a day without regular breaks to fill up on coffee/tea was pretty easy. I don’t miss that at all. I just have a bottle of water with me at my desk and I slurp on that throughout the day. I am not an enthusiastic water drinker by any means – I think it’s a bit of a chore actually – but you just have to get over it, especially as you need to drink more because you’re not taking on board fluids from the coffee and tea. You have to be especially mindful of that if you live in a hot climate like Australia too.

I don’t bother with stuff like green tea, chai tea, peppermint tea etc, in fact I’d rather pull a stinging nettle out of the ground and chew on it than drink green tea!
I don’t drink decaff tea or coffee either. To me that seems like drinking alcohol-free lager, I mean “what’s the point?” You might as well be drinking water anyway. The only exception to this is that at home we buy sugar-free, decaffeinated coke; I suppose that on reflection it’s just a can of cold, fizzy water with a squirt of coke-flavoured goo in it – which doesn’t seem worth the money really. Anyway, we buy this so my son can have a can of coke without going nuts and for me it makes a change from all that water!

Not having a mug of the brown stuff in front of you all day is surprisingly easy but it does come at a price and this price is known as “caffeine withdrawal”. The two major symptoms I have had of this have been headaches and fatigue. Its been two weeks now since I quit caffeine and I have had a headache everyday, not all day and not very severe but definitely enough to annoy you! The other symptom has been fatigue, especially in the evenings. By the time I have got home from work I have been fit to drop and looking to go to bed earlier and earlier. This seems to have passed now though. There were a few evening when the two symptoms overlapped and I was dead-beat with a nagging headache and I was like “remind me why I’m doing this again?”

The withdrawal thing – and particularly how long it lasted – has taken me by surprise. Obviously I know that coffee and tea contained caffeine and that it’s a drug but I guess I was pretty dismissive of it. I mean you get it from Starbucks, you don’t have to buy it secretly on street corners or out of the back of cars. Having felt the effects of giving it up I’ve had to think again about how “mild” a drug it is.

So, in conclusion, the goodselfhelpstuff verdict is that it you don’t mind feeling a bit flat for a couple of weeks (and popping a few aspirins) you won’t have any problems kicking caffeine.

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Try this,

Make yourself a pendulum – you can make this from about 30 cm of thread attached to any small object that has a bit of weight to it (I used my wedding ring). Now hold this in your dominant hand (i.e. if you are right handed hold it in your right hand).

Close your eyes, keep your hand still and visualize the pendulum swinging from left to right. Really see this, see the floor underneath it, see your hand holding it and see the pendulum really swinging from left to right. Do this for 40 seconds and when you open your eyes the pendulum actually will be moving in that direction. Close your eyes and repeat the process only this time instead of the pendulum going from side to side visualize it swinging towards and then away from you. After another 40 seconds or so it will have changed direction and be moving back and forth.

How does this work? It’s very simple really – the body responds to the messages that the mind is sending out and acts to assist it. This is called subliminal motor movement*. The mind is seeing the pendulum swing so the body begins to make the movements that will achieve this and make the pendulum swing in reality. Without you even knowing it your body will work in synchronicity with what your mind is focussing on – in short it will make it happen.

Whatever powerful images you put into your mind, your body will “unconsciously” help to make them come true. For instance, if you clearly visualize acting, sounding and BEING confident – I mean really seeing yourself being bold, decisive and totally unconcerned about what other people think – then you can’t help but physically respond to this. You will stand up straighter, walk more purposefully, perhaps swing your arms by your side a little more and use more confident gestures with your hands. Other people pick up on this, often without realizing why, and then they respond to you differently, subconsciously adapting to their “how I deal with a confident person” mode (remember that a great deal of our communication is non-verbal and intuitive). Any interaction between you and them is now subtly – or even dramatically – altered and the outcomes will also be different.

So, the pictures that you have made in your head have affected you mentally and physically and other people can’t help but be affected by this too so the outcomes will therefore be different as well. Still using the example of confidence, it can be very useful to select someone famous that demonstrates the type of confidence that you would like and watch them in action. Pick an actor or an athlete or even a politician (!), hop onto YouTube and watch them being interviewed. See how they sit, their posture, how they use their hands, how they respond to questions, how they smile and so on. Start to copy them and see how it feels (you might want to make sure that you are alone in the room and the webcam is turned off whilst you are doing this!). This exercise is not to encourage you to turn in a bad Al Pacino impersonation the next time you speak to your Boss, you must always be yourself but you can certainly experiment with a bigger “confidence toolkit”. The results might surprise you!

* I first read about the pendulum exercise in the book “SPORTS MIND” by Jeffrey D. Hodges – which is well worth a read.

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