Another way to get your brain to keep your New Year’s resolution

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calendar 5 Okay, it’s the 5th, five days into your New Year’s resolutions. Your energy is up, you’re committed and everything seems to working out as planned.  You have your goal list completed. But, let’s check your actual progress so far.

Are you —

  • Doing your positive affirmations?   Yes/No
  • Doing your visualizations?   Yes/No
  • Doing your listening to a CD/mp3 reinforcement program?   Yes/No
  • Figured out if you have a visual, auditory or kinesthetic brain?   Yes/No
  • Found a way to avoid temptation yet?

That last question is the tricky one.  Temptation is so easy to fall for.

It’s not the fault of the temptation (whatever it may be) because some people can be tempted by the same thing to indulge and others do not. The secret behind temptation is the pleasure that it gives your brain. So, if pizza is an easy cave-in temptation for you, it means your brain finds it a desirable pleasure that it can pass on to your conscious mind.

The reason your brain finds it such a desirable pleasure is the neuro-chemical, dopamine. Whenever your brain picks-up any of your pleasurable sensations, it programs them into the record files with the neuro-chemical, dopamine.  So, by association whenever you return to something pleasurable, the dopamine pours forth and you’ve got a feel-good brain going for a while.

And, this is the reason behind why during difficult, trying, anxious and depressing times you are tempted more than ever to return to something like pizza, for that temporary feel-good sensation.

Now, if you added pizza to your do not eat list as part of your New Year’s resolution, know that pizza will be out there to tempt you.  Your brain is going to do everything in its power to give in, because it wants to make you happy with a dopamine pleasure input.

Now, can you really get angry at your brain for wanting to do that?

Another way to uncouple your brain’s old wiring connections is to redirect it to a better pleasure source.  Now, I grant you that a green salad in place of a slice of pizza may not seem like an equal pleasure exchange, but it may require a little inventiveness on your part.  Maybe you can make it “one big luscious veggie salad” or “one big luscious fruit salad” or maybe you just have to have fun experimenting until you find something else (healthy of course) you can add to your pleasure list.

Whatever you pick to replace your pizza desire, make sure it’s visually appealing, a medley of different taste and texture sensations, and last but not least make sure you link it up with other happy associations. After all you don’t want to deprive your brain of making you feel happy whenever it can.

More to come …