Start Your Year With A Pruning Season

he new year brings about hope for change, an opportunity to improve your life. The annual ritual of New Year’s resolutions making declarations of changes to come. The problem with resolutions is that within a few months most are abandoned due to loss of focus and diminished effort. The lack of progress can become a source of frustration. If this pattern sounds familiar, then I encourage you to take a different approach

Begin the year with a Pruning Season. Aim to deliberately remove behaviors, habits, people, and mindsets that are preventing you from reaching your full potential. It’s a great way to spark growth if you find yourself stagnant. These elements pull from your resources, and their removal will allow you to harness more of your energy, effort and skills towards accomplishing your goals.

Simple, but not easy, as letting go of ideas, behaviors, and people who help form our identify can be difficult. It takes twice as long to unlearn something and trimming your circle of friends or ending various relationships can be difficult. Anticipate backlash, as some may resent being considered an impediment to your growth or perceive you as looking down on them. However, putting others’ emotions ahead of making personal progress is a sure-fire way to ensure that you remain what they need as opposed to who you have the potential to become. 

Pruning requires you to be deliberate, committed, and steadfast. I recommend these three keys to improve your chances at success: 1. Cut deep. 2. Make it difficult for reattachment, and 3. Continue to reassess and adjust as necessary. These three keys can lead to successfully being able to cut out distractions and obstacles that limit you from reaching your full potential in every aspect of your life.

The first principal is to cut deep. Get to the root of the problem. This may require a few attempts as sometimes we may not understand the depth of our involvement in detrimental behaviors, especially when it comes to the mindset. Manypeople shoot for behaviors without understanding the mindset behind the behavior that is truly the issue. For example, some people have “Bad Picker Syndrome”, as displayed by a persistent pattern of failed relationships. For many theirinsecurities related to being alone is the root cause. Once the root cause is addressed every other issue sprouting from that base falls off. Think about how many bad situations and circumstances sprang from your last failed relationship. Would a deeper cut have helped?

Next, make it difficult to reattach. Along the way, you will be tempted to return to old behaviors, find yourself longing for the comfort that previous bad habits provided, or catch yourself slipping back into a negative way of thinking. It is crucial to not allow the time nor the space for them to take hold. Be intentional about filling voids by replacing negative behaviors with positive behaviors. Avoid the places where you may reengage with individuals continuing to display the behaviors or hold the mindset that you’re trying to eliminate. 

It’s important to be intentional about early identification and eradication of previously eliminated elements. This will limit the negative impact of any setbacks or relapses, improving the chances of sustained improvement. Establish a reliable self-monitoring system and rally your support system to assist. Most relapses are multifactorial, so see if you can identity patterns of behaviors or thoughts that precede any relapses or setbacks. You may uncover additional roots to address.

Following these three principles can result in a successful pruning season. Remember you may require several attempts to eliminate and overcome detrimental actions, behaviors, and attitudes. However, no need to worry, seasons always come back around.  They are a time for change as well as reflection and present an opportunity to a better job this season than last season. Most importantly, you will find that once your technique becomes more regimented, consistent progress will follow. Happy Pruning Season