Don’t get gripped by the script!

January is a time when many of us consider making personal changes. Inevitably, we also reflect on some of the resolutions to change that we made last January. And we might well come to the conclusion that change is just too darn difficult.  This article discusses how this plays out with the specific concern of weight management but the basic argument applies to many other areas of life. Unfortunately, our change strategies are often dominated by a “fix me”script that seems to lose its power to motivate over time such as a year. It turns out that we do much better over the long term if we line up our resolutions with what I call “toward moves”: Behaviours that move us closer to the people and things that are most important in life.