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Device Can Help You Keep Your New Year's Resolutions
(ARA) - Every year, millions of Americans make ambitious New Year's resolutions -- from losing weight to giving up smoking to watching less television. But the hard truth is that a majority of those resolutions have been broken even before the holiday decorations come down.
According to one estimate, one out of four resolutions bite the dust within a week, half of them are toast within a month, and after two months, only about one-third are still alive. "New Year's resolutions are nothing more than the 'special holiday edition' of something people produce by the truckload every day of the year: good intentions," says psychologist Dr. Steve Levinson, creator of the MotivAider, a simple electronic device that helps people follow through on their self-improvement goals.
"It's not surprising that we do such a poor job of keeping our New Year's resolutions -- after all, we do a rotten job of following through on our good intentions in general," Levinson points out. The big question is why all these good intentions fall by the wayside.
Levinson has spent two decades researching this question and trying to figure out how people can keep their resolutions and meet their goals. "The problem is our good intentions aren't wired directly to our behavior," he says. "So, although we can easily decide to stay away from those potato chips or go to the gym every day, deciding what to do doesn't necessarily translate into doing it. In our busy day-to-day lives, our good intentions can easily get lost in the shuffle, and before we know it, we forget the high hopes we had when we started the New Year."
The good news is there are ways that people can do a much better job of following through, according to Levinson. "People need some mechanism to keep their attention sharply focused on their good intentions in order to achieve their goals," he says. This realization led him to invent the MotivAider.
Levinson's invention works by automatically keeping your attention focused so your good intention can't possibly get lost in the shuffle. "It's designed to create a more dependable and powerful connection between intention and action," he explains.
The device, which was introduced in 1987 and is used worldwide in the fields of healthcare, education, business, sports and self-improvement, uses an automatically resetting timer and a silent vibrating stimulus to send users a brief, private signal at regular intervals.
"Simply devise a brief personal message that reminds and motivates you to take action to achieve your goal. Then assign your personal message to the MotivAider's vibration so that whenever you feel the vibration, you'll automatically think the message," says Levinson. With a steady stream of private reminders flowing through your mind, you stay set on your goal until you reach it.
The compact, battery-powered device weighs less than three ounces, and will fit in your pocket, or you can wear it on a belt like a pager. "The MotivAider boosts your willpower by keeping your most motivating reason to change right in front of you," says Levinson.
Read Dr. Levinson's report "Following Through on Your New Year's Resolutions" at www.habitchange.com.
Copyright © 2006, ARA Content
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