Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” With the new year upon us, many of you will make New Year's resolutions in order to fix a certain aspect of your life that you were not too happy with in the previous year. Typically the resolutions hold strong for the first couple of months, but by mid-year majority of people fall back into the same old habits: in other words, they fall back into the cycle.

Now, a cycle is a repeating process that yields the same results, but in this case, a cycle is a repeating set of behaviors that yield the same result. There are three types of cycles: positive cycles which yield positive outcomes, negative cycles which yield negative or unwanted outcomes, and neutral cycles which yield neither a positive nor a negative outcome. In order to move your life in the direction you want, you must eliminate the negative cycles while simultaneously converting those neutral cycles into positive ones.

Every problem a person goes through in their life can be attributed to a negative cycle, whether that is weight issues, relationship problems, drug addiction, etc. Negative cycles are those actions which bring short term satisfaction but ultimately yield no positive benefit to your life. In order to stop these negative cycles one must first understand how they begin. The negative action that spurs the cycle first begins with an urge, next is the contemplation of the urge, which then leads to the justification of the urge. After the urge is justified, it is carried out. Humans are creatures of habit and the more we do something the easier it is to justify that action which ultimately leads into the incorporation negative cycles into our everyday routines.

Now time for the good part, otherwise known as the part where I tell you how to break those negative cycles and ultimately steer your life in the direction you want it to. However, before I do this, I need to add a disclaimer by saying this will not be an easy task to do, but if you are serious about changing your life and follow these steps, your desired results will follow. The first thing you must do is decide what you want for your life and be as specific as possible.

An example of this would be someone saying “I want to work a job that pays me 150k a year, I want to be in good enough shape where I can run marathons at will, I want to be married to a woman who is ambitious, smart, kind, and beautiful” the more specific you are the better. By creating these goals you’re creating the image of yourself in which you want to supersede your old image. After you create this new image/lifestyle for yourself, it is time to begin acting congruent with it.

Remember when I broke down the stages of a negative cycle? Now it’s time to put that into play. The urge to do the action isn’t the problem, but instead the problem arises in the contemplation and justification phases of the cycle. After you get the urge and begin to contemplate, you must ask yourself, “Does this action fall in line with the image I have created for myself?” Once at this crossroad you have two options: the first option is to ignore the urge, or you can go with option two which is to begin to justify the action. Once you begin to justify the action it will inevitably occur, so you want to catch yourself in the contemplation stage where you are deciding whether or not to do it. Once you catch yourself you must perform a counter action to take the place of the negative action.

An example of this would be a girl who recently broke up with her boyfriend three months ago because he was a cheater, but every now and then she gets the urge to invite him over. She always gives in to her urge and invites him over which leads to them becoming intimate. The morning after she wakes up full of regret, asking herself why she keep doing this, and eventually she stumbles upon this article and decides enough is enough.

Naturally she gets another urge to invite her ex back over. As she contemplates inviting him over she remembers that she doesn’t want to live her life like that, constantly going back to a man who cares nothing about her. Instead she heads over to the local bar to mingle and interact with people. As time goes on she no longer has the urge to see her ex anymore and she has actually met a new guy who treats her nicely. The whole point of that example was to show you that by replacing the negative action with positive ones you can eventually reduce the power of the urge and move your life in the direction you want it to go in.

Now I know what you’re saying: Jalon, have you lost your mind? Do you really expect me to be able to do all of that? Yes, I do, because chances are if you’re reading this post, you are at that point in your life when you can’t take any more and desperately need change. The effectiveness of this post relies heavily on you and your resolve to be better. I was raised to believe that you can do anything you want to do and be anything you want to be. This concept doesn’t just apply for me, but for everybody. So just to recap of what was gone over in this post in order to eliminate those negative cycles in your life you must first:

• Identify those negative cycles; knowing is half the battle
• Sit down and understand how you want to live your life
• When the urge comes, ask yourself, "Is this action congruent with my ideal identity?"
• Don’t be afraid to change. Trust me, it’s worth it in the long term. Short term gratification typically leads to long term suffering.

Hopefully you can use this knowledge to enhance the quality of your life. Now go out there and be great!