Listen
Up! Newsletter
Change
Your
Perceptions – Change Your Life!
Carol M.
Welsh,
Author/Speaker
This
newsletter
supplements Carol’s book: STOP WHEN YOU SEE RED
To learn more about the four
perceptual
styles, to order the book,
or to contact Carol Welsh, click here: www.stopred.com
January
2006
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Say What?
“USA
Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four
people
make up 75 percent of the population.” David
Letterman
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Tip of the Month
The most ignored
New Year’s
resolution is to make time for yourself.
If you always put your needs after others’,
you will eventually resent them. They’ll feel this resentment and may
wonder
what they did to deserve it. “Looking out for number one” doesn’t
necessarily
mean you’re being selfish. Rather, it means that you value
yourself as well as others.
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What's Keeping You from Keeping Your New
Year's
Resolutions?
“New Year's Resolution Usage
Plummets from 88% to 45%!” Jeff Barge. In
an article
located at this link: http://www.welchmedia.com/news/article_385.shtml,
Barge quotes
Stephen Shapiro
who conducted a survey of 1,012 Americans: “According to
our study,
only 8% of Americans say they always achieve their New Year’s
resolutions.
Setting a New Year’s resolution is a recipe for defeat. At some point,
people
just decide to stop hurting themselves, and they call the whole thing
off.”
On average, a
whopping 91% of
Americans break their New Year’s resolutions within the first 17 days!
The good
news is that it may not be your fault if you can’t fulfill your
resolutions. To keep a resolution, you need to structure it to your
primary
perceptual style: Audio, Feeler, Visual, or Wholistic. Your style
determines
what will motivate you to keep your
resolution.
If you’re an Audio, challenges
motivate you. But it has to be a challenge you can’t resist
because you
believe that meeting the challenge will cause others to respect you
more or
hold you in higher esteem. The resolutions most likely to succeed will
focus on
personal or professional achievement, not
relationships!
Trap: Analyzing an idea or goal to the point that
you never
“get around to it.”
If you’re a Feeler, working
on something that is enjoyable and gives you a warm feeling
motivates you.
As you write your resolution, giving yourself small "feel good"
rewards as you progress towards your goal will help you get there much
quicker.
Also, resolutions pertaining to family or improving relationships are
preferred, because Feelers love harmony in relationships.
Trap: Relationship-improvement resolutions involve
other
people. If your resolution requires actions from others, it needs their
consensus to succeed. Otherwise they won’t be motivated and the
resolution will
fail.
If you’re a Visual, seeing
results from your efforts motivates you. Smaller steps,
leading to
larger steps are recommended so you see results faster.
Trap: Taking on too much of the goal at once and
getting
discouraged. Or getting trapped in one of the steps because you want it
to be
completed exactly as you visualized it before moving on to the next
step.
If you’re a Wholistic, setting
a target date for the first step is what motivates you. The
resolutions
most likely to succeed are sequential. Set a target date for the first
step.
When that is accomplished, then set a completion date for the next step.
Trap: Working on too many goals, causing you to
get spread
too thin and resulting in unfinished projects or losing interest.
Individual
resolutions are
easier to keep than couple resolutions. What if your style is different
from
your partner’s? How can you reframe couple resolutions so they’ll work
for both
of you?
Usually your first
or second
perceptual style matches your partner’s. For instance, Jane is a
Wholistic /
Feeler. Her husband, Jake, is Wholistic / Audio. His Audio part wants
to
maintain personal control. He doesn’t like when people tell him what he
needs
to do. Jake definitely is not interested in “improving the
relationship” type
resolutions.
Jane, on the other
hand as a
Feeler prefers resolutions that will improve relationships. So she
decides to
set a New Year’s resolution to get Jake to listen to her more
attentively.
Immediately it sets up expectations for him–that he will
listen to her. If she announces this goal to him, he will resist.
That’s not his goal.
The following goal
is how she
can restructure it so it becomes her goal but accomplishes the desired
outcome of
having her husband listen more attentively:
I will collect my thoughts before talking to Jake so I get to the
bottom line
as quickly as possible rather than rambling.
Jane could also
share her
goal with Jake. For instance, she could say that her New Year’s
resolution is
to get to the point when she talks to him and not go off on tangents.
She could
even ask for his help if she starts rambling. But if she asks her Audio
husband
for help, she needs to be prepared to tell them when she is ready to
practice
without his help. Otherwise she might find herself bristling when she
hears him
mutter, “You’re rambling again.”
A Visual and
Wholistic couple
can be at odds. The Visuals like to write out their goals. They may
labor for
hours over the New Year’s resolutions and when finished expect you to
see what
they see in their goals and the “necessary” steps to get there.
Wholistics
don’t care for resolutions that are so structured. They like the
freedom of
being flexible if they discover a better way or idea for attaining the
goal.
But the Visual might insist that they “stick with the plan.”
In this instance
it’s best to
be supportive of each other’s personal goals rather than trying to
write joint
goals. However, they could complement each other. The Wholistic is
intuitive
and may have some good insights on how to fulfill the resolution.
However, once
the planning is done, the Wholistic often loses interest. The Visual
will see
to it that the task is completed or the goal is met.
Keeping resolutions
doesn't
have to be a chore. By knowing what motivates you into action, you'll
help to
increase your chances ten-fold for success! One resolution that is
possible for
everyone is to increase Random Acts of Kindness. It costs nothing, is
easy to
do, and is self-motivating. When you reach out to someone with
kindness, you
end up feeling so good afterwards that you find yourself doing more
acts of
kindness. Children are discovering the power of kindness and generosity
as
well. It feels like being hugged.
Carol
Welsh has over 25 years experience as a speaker
and workshop facilitator. She captivates her audiences and readers with
humor
and common sense techniques while zeroing in to the core of
relationship
problems. www.stopred.com