New Year’s is the time of change and opportunity. We keep trying to make New Year’s resolutions to make changes in our lives - to lose weight, make more money, get out of debt, be in more loving relationships. All of these things that we try to change outside of ourselves keeps us actually repeating the same habits, the same cycles.

Until you take a look at your belief system and what is going on inside - what beliefs you have that keep the cycles going - history will keep repeating itself.

Your beliefs are what cause you to think and feel in certain ways. Your beliefs are created from the earliest moments of life when our basic needs are ignored or confusing to our parents or caregiver. From the first time our earliest needs are not met by our parents, we begin to create mechanisms to protect ourselves. Our personalities start developing. We stop crying or cry louder. As infants we are totally dependent on parents for everything. When our needs are not met we start thinking that we are not good enough or deserving enough to have this needs met. We begin to think that we are not competent to get the love we need. We learn that others are unreliable and untrustworthy. We learn that others are not accessible and willing to respond. We then will put ourselves in similar situations trying to prove that we are not worthy. We are not able to see any other aspect of difficult or challenging situations. We develop beliefs about ourself all through our life. Our lives become mostly lived in an unconscious way from these old beliefs that keep getting reinforced by our choices. We live our lives trying to get our unconscious needs met through our work, relationships and what we do. Our neediness really shows up in many different ways. As adults they tell us little of what we really need but more about how much we need to grieve not ever having gotten those needs met.

The thing is that these beliefs we develop - I am not good enough, smart enough or not worthy of love and nurturing are not true - but still we go on living like they were true. We don’t know any other way. And they feel so real we just take them for granted.

Your beliefs become values that are important to you and the way you live your life. They are based on our unconscious (and often untrue) beliefs. When your values are challenged or questioned they usually result in an emotional response. We react to protect our beliefs even as unconscious as they might be. Our egos spring into action to preserve our painful places from being hurt again. We stop thinking about others and only are thinking about our own needs. Our deep needs for being right take over and we fear being vulnerable.

Because so much of what we believe is really unconscious the only way we have of knowing that we are working from a false belief is the way we feel. Your feelings will tell you what you are thinking (consciously and unconsciously). If you are feeling love, joy, happiness you are on the right track. If you are feeling anger, frustration, depression you are reacting from a false belief.
Since you can’t really change how you feel by saying something like - I just want to feel happy when you are not happy, the best way to change how you feel is to change your thoughts.

So we have our feelings that are telling us what we are thinking and believing. Our feelings are also what propel us into action. If you are acting from a thought that just isn’t true, your actions are out of integrity with your being. Life becomes a struggle or life is hard.

So instead of making a new years resolution this year - think about making a new years action - what action are you going to take to get you where you want to be? Where do you want to be? 15 pounds lighter, thousands of dollars richer or experiencing a loving relationship - all of these things that we want so badly are all a result of our thoughts. So if you don’t have what you want in your life -start challenging your thoughts. Start paying attention to your feelings so they can start to tell you what you are thinking.

The actions don’t have to be moving the world in one day. What one thing can you do to get more massage clients today? Are you thinking about working with a special population? Make a note to contact someone in that sector - you don’t even have to contact them today- you can do that tomorrow. Just take it one step at a time and do what you can do.
There are many books and websites out there on things to do to promote your practice. The thing that is really missing from these programs is the support in doing so. So many massage therapists are out there thinking they have to do it all alone and they ‘forget’ to ask for help or use the ‘I don’t have the money’ excuse not to get the help they need.

So many new years resolutions fail because of not taking the necessary steps.