New Year's Resoluions

At the beginning of the year, many people get inspired … to lose weight, start a business, write a book, or fulfill some other desire. By the end of January, the desire may have faded, and by March it’s only a wish.

How can desires become goals? The secret lies in creating a clear thought-image. A goal is an image of the completed end result. I heard recently that Wayne Dyer, a prolific published author, makes a “mock book” before writing. He decides what he wants to title the book, makes a mock cover, and puts it around a blank book. This helps him to visualize the completed book.

Some people use this same principle with weight-loss goals. They find a photo of someone who has the size and shape body they want, then they paste a photograph of their own head on top of the body.

The mind works in pictures or images. Goals need to be visualized in picture form. Picturing or imaging what you want, and picturing or imaging how to get there, produces productive results!

A great exercise is a 30-day treasure map. Choose a goal that you want to accomplish within 30 days. Find a picture from a magazine, or draw a picture of what you want. Then, choose one picture for each of 30 days that represents the activity you will take each day. This is a way to visualize the end result and all the steps along the way.

I used this treasure map years ago to find my “dream house.” I was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a college town with expensive housing. I wanted to move from the house I was in which was shabby and run-down, into a respectable place. I had a clear image of what I wanted: a quiet street, a garden, a piano, and a fireplace. I also imaged the price I wanted to pay, $125 a month. (At that time, a house such as I was visualizing in Ann Arbor would have been about $850 - $100 a month.)

I drew an image of the “treasure,” the end result: a house with flowers in front, the piano and fireplace in the living room, and myself sitting in the living room. Then I drew pictures for each day’s activity: putting an ad in the paper, looking on the bulletin board at the university housing office, making phone calls, going to look at potential places, making notices and putting them up on bulletin boards around town, and so forth.

I followed my map, doing the action I pictured for each day. On the 10th day, I went to the university housing office. There was a new notice on the board which said, “Professor going on sabbatical. House for rent.” I called and a kind woman answered the phone. When I asked her how much the rent was, she said it was negotiable.

I hopped on my bicycle, rode to the street she’d given me, and at first I could not find the street number. Then, I noticed a kind of trellis in-between two houses with the house number. I got off my bicycle and walked through the trellis down a stone path that looked like a fairy tale! There, settled back from the street, was a little stone cottage with a flower garden in front. I knocked and the woman answered the door. She invited me into the living room which had a piano and a fireplace.
She showed me around the lovely 3-bedroom house. In the backyard was a vegetable garden.

When I asked her how much the rent was, she said she was more concerned about people who would take care of her place when she was gone on sabbatical than she was about the money. I had good references, as did my two friends who would be sharing the house with me. She said, “What about $400?” I did a quick mental calculation: 400 divided by 3 = $133. Just short of the $125 a month I’d wanted.
So, in ten days, far less than the 30 days for the map, I received exactly what I wanted … except for the price which was slightly higher than I’d imagined. However, I realize now that had I asked, I could probably have negotiated the price of the house to $375 which would have been exactly the $125 I wanted. That was the one area I doubted, and so I manifested my doubt along with my desire!

You can learn from this story to decide exactly what you want and trust the infallible workings of subconscious mind to bring to you the best you can imagine. Expect to receive your heart's desire. Picturing goals and the steps to fulfill them is a satisfying and productive way to make those New Year’s resolutions come true!