New Year's Resolution Success: Life Coach Sarah Baldwin on Befriending Your Nervous System

The Failure of New Year's Resolutions

• 🎯 Most Americans fail their New Year's resolutions by the end of January, with gym memberships seeing an 80% drop-off by February.
• 💡 The primary reason for failure is trying to will our way towards goals or relying on wishful thinking.

The Role of the Autonomic Nervous System

• 🧠 Our autonomic nervous system is the true driver of our ability to actualize desired life changes.
• ⚠️ Goals like stepping into purpose, finding relationships, or achieving financial success can trigger past dangers or inhibitions in our nervous system, leading to avoidance or self-sabotage.
• ⚡ Experiencing dysregulation, stuckness, shutdown, or anxiety are signals that the nervous system is reacting to perceived threats associated with the desired change.

Befriending Your Nervous System

• ✅ The key is to work with your nervous system rather than battling against it, showing it that the desired life is safe.
• 🔑 This involves understanding that the nervous system isn't malfunctioning but simply doesn't yet recognize the new life as safe.

Strategies for Nervous System Regulation

• 🛠️ Consistent somatic practices are crucial for nervous system regulation.
• 📈 Providing evidence to the nervous system that the desired life is safe is essential, as it acts as a data collector.
• 🚀 Implementing tolerable steps—actions that don't feel good but are completable—helps build this evidence, gradually showing the nervous system that the goal is achievable and safe.
• 🔁 Repetition of these tolerable steps is key to actualizing long-term changes.