The New Year is a natural time for making resolutions.  For women, diet and exercise resolutions top the list, followed by something about your money life, such as a new purchase, more savings or understanding your investments.  All too often you soon find your determination slipping from your grasp and your resolutions become empty words on a piece of paper.

What makes the difference in a successful New Year's resolution and an unsuccessful one?  If you could define the anatomy of a successful resolution what would it be?  What are the steps to achieving lasting change?

Surely the answers to these questions would raise your self-esteem.  For with every unfullfilled resolution, you lose a degree of credibility with yourself and begin to set up an internal dialog of distrust.  You begin to discover that you are "saying" change, without feeling or knowing you can really do it.

There are two fundamental shifts that must be made to become a successful change maker.

First, take inventory.
What degree of change is realistic?

An too often you make a resolution out of frustration.  In that moment of "by golly, I am going to do this," you choose to make a 180-degree change.  You fail to take into consideration that whatever behaviors you adopted to get to this point took years to "perfect."  Somehow you imagine for a moment that you can simply erase all that learned behavior in an instant.

The truth is, change is easier, and more sustainable, in small bites.  If you want to save more money, rather than doubling your savings, increase it by 5 percent a month.  In 15 months you will have doubled your savings and hardly have noticed.  Want to go a little faster?  Incease your savings by 7 percent a month and you will have doubled your savings rate in one year.  Suffering is a choice.  Why not choose change with ease and grace?

Do I believe at all levels that I will make this change?

If you have made a promise to yourself over the years and not kept them, you have lost credibility with yourself.  When making a resolution, ask yourself if you believe it at every level.  Do you feel that you can make this change?  Do you believe in yourself?  Are you thinking thoughts of success or self-doubt?  Inventory your mind, body and spirit.  Unless you get congruence at all levels, your change process will be frustrating and end unsuccessfully.

If you discover a pool of negativity in your thoughts, try the following exercise.  Get quiet and still.  Welcome in compassion and non-judgement.  Close your eyes and put your attention down low in your belly button.  Ask all your negative thoughts to reveal themselves.  Welcome them.  Once they begin, journal what comes up.  Imagine your self-doubt passing through with every line you write.  When the feeling in your body is one of confidence, you have paved the way to a successful resolution.  If one session doesn't completely dissipate your negativity, repeat the process.

Second, understand change occurs in stages.
Change does have an anatomy.  There are four stages of change.  Just like having a map on a long road trip gives you confidence by marking your progress, understanding the stages of change can ease your frustration and keep you focused on the positive.

Stage one: Unconscious incompetence.  At this stage you are incompetent, and totally unaware that your life is not working.  Circumstances outside you control your life.  Someone else is at fault.  If only is the cure to every ill.  If you have already made a resolution you have moved to stage two.

Stage two:  Conscious incompetence.  You are incompetent, but you are aware that you are incompetent.  This is a BIG step, a critical step, a step where most women choose to beat themselves up.  Resist this urge.  Instead celebrate your growth in stepping into the money life you want and deserve.

Stage Three:  Conscious competence.  This is a challenging step.  It requires moment-to-moment effort.  You are now making new choices, but it requires an extrodinary amount of attention.  It also requires forgiveness of self, as you will often relapse into your old unconscious behavior.  You are like a baby learning to walk.  Celebrate every step, and every fall.

Step Four: Unconscious competence.  Congratulations. Your change process is now complete.  You  now make new choices that support and nuture you.  You are no longer reacting; you are creating, moment to moment.

My own personal experience when I first heard of the four stages of change was that I felt liberated.  As a woman who has always tried to improve, I frequently found myself beating myself up for not changing fast enough.  Learning about the four stages gave me a framework to see that I was moving forward, even when it did not appear that way.

Whatever resolution you made this year, get it out and dust it off.  It is not too late to create lasting change.

Reprinted from:  The Sunday Challenger, By: Mackey McNeill, 2/6/2005