Happy New Year and Welcome to 2015!  

We hope that you all enjoyed the holiday season and are on your way toward enjoying a very happy new year.  A well-known and widely practiced tradition around this time of year is to make New Year's Resolutions.  Unfortunately as time progresses and the season of spring cleaning comes along, resolutions are commonly........well........unresolved. 

This month's edition of Minding What Matters is geared toward helping you persevere and maintain your motivation for a fresh start.  Psychologically, there is something very constructive and encouraging about making a "fresh start".  A renewed emphasis on making improvements and achieving goals is a great starting point.  We've developed a few key points to help you along the journey.

• Be Specific.  When developing your goals, be sure to make them specific enough to be able to clearly define what you are endeavoring to achieve, to be able to measure your progress, and to be able to evaluate any relevant action steps.  Many people - even organizations - have found the approach of creating SMART (Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Timely) goals to be helpful.  You can find more information via an internet search on "SMART goals".
• Personalize Your Motivation for Change. While there are many valuable and important reasons to improve your health and well-being the most important reasons will be the ones you claim as your very own.  It will be your personal reasons for making changes that will determine where you begin in the change process, that will influence the path you take along the way, and that will help to encourage your resilience as challenges come and go.  Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an approach used by clinicians to clarify and strengthen one's own motivation and commitment to change.  While MI has roots in creating behavioral change regarding substance abuse, its has since been adapted widely and very successfully to a variety of needs.  A clinician versed in the use of Motivational Interviewing can help you move further along the path of change.
• Get and Stay Connected. Research has historically demonstrated patterns of improved health and behavior status when individuals are connected to a positive and supportive social network.  Letting others know your goals helps with accountability, strengthens your sense of commitment and resolve, and helps to make the efforts involved more enjoyable.  Connecting with others who are working to achieve life changes - whether similarly focused or varied - has an empowering sense of camaraderie and solidarity. 
• Make Your Move. Borrowing from the well-known tagline of a popular athletics company, clients have often heard me encouraging them to "just do it."  For me, these three brief words are meant to encourage my clients to pick a place to start, make their move, and then keep moving.  It can be easy to become overwhelmed when thinking about the journey ahead. To help combat this potential fear...get moving...just start somewhere.  This is not necessarily a helpful approach for all cases, but it does help to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed and paralyzed by worries, which often especially start with the phrase...."but what if". Mindfulness strategies and efforts to keep your steps manageable will be very helpful.
• Celebrate Your Effort. Cherish Your Accomplishments. It is incredibly important to set your mind on your goals and then to make strides towards achieving them.  It is equally important, however, to set aside time to take pride in both the effort it takes to achieve goals as well as when mini-goals are accomplished along the way.  The destination is important...so is the journey!

These are just a few tools to get you started.  Be sure to check out the section below that focuses on putting some of the these principles into action in fun and creative ways. If there are changes you like to make or even positive gains previously made that you'd like to maintain - please let us know how we can be of service.  We firmly believe that sometimes the greatest gift truly is found not in receiving but in giving and we'd love to give you a helping hand, a nudge, a lift, a cheer, a map, a compass....quite frankly if it is helpful and we can offer...we're happy to help. 

J. Oni Dakhari, PsyD

Licensed Psychologist

NJ #4481  DE#736

Minding What Matters, Editor-in-Chief