We are almost halfway through January, do you know where your resolutions are?

Chances are, if you are like 92% of resolution-makers, you have already slacked off on at least one promise you made to yourself. Or maybe this year you decided you just wouldn’t make any resolutions – but you are sneakily trying to improve yourself anyway, and have already disappointed yourself. It is so easy to do.

It seems to be part of the human condition – declaring goals we want to achieve, and then almost immediately finding all the excellent reasons why we can’t achieve them. As Ray Higdon says, most people are fighting for their own limitations.

So why do we do that? And how can we stop doing that?

I’ve been reading Noah St. John’s work on Afformations – a powerful method of self-talk that involves asking ourselves questions, rather than making statements we don’t believe. If we paper our house with post-it notes declaring “I am a millionaire!” or “I am living into my ideal body!”, it becomes very difficult to silence that nagging little voice that says, “yeah, right. Who do you think you are? None of this is true.”

But if we ask ourselves questions instead, such as “Why do I always have enough money?”, or “Why do I love my beautiful, healthy body?”, there is no room for that little voice. The incredible supercomputers in our subconscious minds go to work, instead, trying to answer the questions.

Improving our self-talk is very important, and a crucial part of the work we are doing on ourselves. But sitting in the lotus position and meditating on our goals is not enough.

We have to do the work. It’s amazing how simple that is, and how hard it can be to focus on just doing the work. Fortunately, there are people out there who can help, such as Noah St. John, whom I mentioned above. 

Another great help is the work of the writer Steven Pressfield. He has written some excellent books on the resistance that we have to doing the work, and how to work our way through it. I recommend, in particular, his books “The War of Art”, “Do the Work” and “Turning Pro.”

Both St. John and Pressfield strongly recommend, among other things, finding a community that will help you push through the doubt, the fear and the negative self-talk, that are the main components of the resistance.

The bottom line, however, is painfully simple. If you have a goal that you really want to achieve, you need to do the work. Not just talk about it, plan about it, dream about it, but just go out there and do the work. That is the real secret to success.