Turn New Year's Resolutions into Soul Guided Action Plans
Most resolutions fall into two different categories: insanity and fear.
Insanity is the type of resolution you make year after year after year and somehow think that without anything changing in the new year it will somehow magically happen. You know, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and thinking you will get a different result." Whether it's quitting smoking, losing weight, stopping the cycle of bad choices in dates, changing something in your life you've been suffering through forever, etc., etc., etc., the same resolution gets made this year that was made last year, with no plan for how to do it differently in the coming year or even that there should be one. These resolutions include the 'all the other diets failed but this one will succeed' delusion, the 'if only I try a little harder doing exactly what I've always done before it will work this time' mantra, and the 'well you never really committed to it last year, but this time you will' excuse. In fact, these types of resolutions sometimes come with dollops of feverish overhopefullness or rations of despair. They are like weight we carry out of duty and never really put down.
Fear is the other type of resolution. It's the set up for failure resolution which gives us an automatic out. It's the resolution so grand there is no way any human outside of The Guinness Book of World Records could hope to achieve it without significant help from a team of trained professionals and even then... We make these resolutions because we are afraid to succeed. We are afraid of having our lives change. We're afraid of losing who we are, of losing what little appears to be working in our lives, of the identity we have formed around who we are now which includes not succeeding, and so we set the unattainable goal in order to say we tried and then be off the hook for another year. Because no one expects us to actually achieve our resolutions and most people give up after a couple of weeks anyway. Resolutions are just a ritual thing you do at New Year's, right?
95% of all New Year resolutions are basically punishments dressed up as hope. We pick the things we don't like about ourselves, the things we think are broken or bad, not up to par or holding us back, pick a punishment and then set out to implement it. This process of creating and implementing resolution punishments, of necessity, conflicts with the life we are already living and which we have no intention of giving up. The steps proposed to manifest such resolutions are impractical and do not fit with the life we have or any sustainable life we would care to undertake. They often are all or nothing, disruptive of regular routine, require us to take on new habits quickly and without support, while forcing us into doing things which in the moment are unpleasant or restrict the amount of time we have to do pleasant things.
These resolutions are a bit like forcing a puzzle piece into a place where it doesn't fit. We decide we're going to do things differently, target the offending issue, then ram a solution into place hoping it will magically stay in place, conform to the intended boundaries, meanwhile we're shoving and pushing in a way which bends the piece, does damage to the rest of the puzzle and leaves us completely unsatisfied with the results. What we're left with in the end is mostly a waste of effort other than to clarify what we already knew, there's a place for a puzzle piece and this one doesn't fit.
In fact, it's often the case the plans we implement don't fit with the actual goal, as if we had set up an equation where the goal is for something to equal 20 and we agreed to add 3+5+4 to get there. And once we have attempted all this, made a mess of ourselves, our lives, the steps and the goal, we relinquish the whole thing feeling worse about ourselves as fit punishment for once again not having become the person we should be.
Some people try to get around all this with what seems to be a loophole: intentions. People will point, in pride mixed with trepidation, to the fact they have decided to not make resolutions. Instead they set intentions for the New Year. This does a couple of things. First, intentions do not automatically come with action plans. They are internal conversations one is having with the self and perhaps personal guides or angels which are the beginning of manifestation, but do not have any structure which would drive the manifestation process forward. Second, they have no accountability feature. We do not regularly announce our intentions for the new year, nor do we ask anyone to join us in them or hold us accountable to them. We can change them at will, forget them, allow them to flex around situations like water around rocks, and in the end they rarely impact our daily lives.
However, intentions used in this way are simply the opposite or light side of resolutions. Using the same criteria of things we don't like about ourselves, which we think are broken or bad, not up to par or holding us back, they allow us to set an intention of improving on them without requiring us to make any solid plan to do so or setting any metrics for measuring whether we have. We can then feel good for a time at focusing on growth and achievement while not interfering with the normal course of our daily lives.
One of the key issues involved in New Year resolutions is "should". We look at the life we have created for ourselves, or which has evolved around us and compare it with a template of what we think it should be. This could be something we have been taught by our family throughout our life or standards which our community or social structures mandate for us. These "shoulds" often include socializing more, losing weight, getting fit, being a better spouse, getting a better job, getting promoted, spending more time with the kids, being more compassionate, being more open hearted, doing more for others, taking on the project which has been sitting around forever, getting over the procrastination, cleaning up the clutter and so on. Just to be clear, none of these templates of how to be in the world is essentially wrong or bad, but applied without context, in the face of specifics, complexities, and essential truths, they become weapons.
Luckily, it doesn't have to be this way. In fact, you have my permission to stop beating yourself with any resolution or intention you've already set for yourself. Feel free to set them down and rest.
Resolutions are promises we make to ourselves. They actually go into our body, they are heard by our soul, they are promises we make to the most important person in our lives, ourselves. They are a way in which we reward all of our hard work from this year, encourage growth and happiness and exploration, create trust in our abilities to be in this world the way we desired to be when we agreed to come here. And while each of us has experienced the shame and the disappointment and the sadness of not living up to a promise we've made to someone else, somehow we think it's all right to renege on these most sacred of promises we make to ourselves, and we do it all the time!
So here's a radical notion I'm going to put out there for you. It's something to think about. Instead of making a resolution(s) this year, which you know you won't keep, how about not making a resolution(s) at all? They aren't required and, to my mind, better to not make promises than to set yourself up to fail just to fulfill a New Year's ritual. It's something to consider. Keep that in the back of your mind.
If you're choosing to make a resolution, step back and do your prep work first. Look at the resolutions you are thinking of making and check to see if they are touched by insanity or fueled by fear. If so, perhaps you might want to rethink them. Resolutions shouldn't be aspirations; they shouldn't be hopes or vague dreams that by their very nature are unattainable. They should be action items which guide you through the next year. They shouldn't be "I'll lose 30 lbs., achieve all my career goals, and meet the person of my dreams." They should be something like any one of the following: I'm going to focus on changing my life at a sustainable pace in order to support myself in achieving my goals this year including going to yoga once a week, substituting two meals at home for two fast food meals, and going running once on the weekend. -OR- I will work to improve my career in a way to make my life better and more enjoyable by finding a way to work smarter not harder and reducing my work hours without reducing my income. -OR- I will work to enjoy my social life in a healthy way by choosing to explore a new activity I've always wanted to try on a monthly basis. To do so I will make the following incremental changes in my daily/weekly/monthly routine which I know I can do long-term:......."
Don't set yourself up to fail and make your resolutions tests of your worthiness or will power. Set yourself up to succeed by being realistic about what you can actually do and achieve. Challenge yourself enough to make change, but not so much that you fail and walk away. See your resolutions as exciting things to pursue, not one more task on a list which is already way too long.
New Year's resolutions should be a hug you give yourself which tells you 'You can do it' and sets up your year as one of change and happiness and success. The Akashics which surrounded you at Solstice are just waiting to hear what you choose to do, how you choose to make your light grow and are full of opportunities for supporting you in those endeavors.
Resolutions can be good things if we utilize them, not as punishments, but as manifestation plans for taking the next step in creating the life we deserve. If we think of our life as the work of an architect and each New Year as the time when we receive our new budget and the freedom to create anything we want, as long as it connects and improves on what is already existing, then we can see resolutions as the chance to draw up new plans. We can renovate and restore, we can invent entirely new rooms or even wings, we can explore landscaping, water features, or new materials, we can go searching for good deals, recycled gems, and continue to create our own unique masterpiece.
The first step is to get a clear inventory of what we have to work with right now. This means honoring, valuing and welcoming the good things we are and have achieved so far. Think of this like doing an end of year clear out of a closet. Everything should get pulled out, the shelves and interior cleaned, then the contents sorted. Unlike some fearless moral inventory, this should be like any other household chore. Some things are worn out and need to go, some things might be useful and so we'll keep them off to the side, and some stuff we absolutely keep and are grateful to have. No need for incriminations, angst, or beatings.
Of course, events which happened to us aren't really a broken toaster or an outgrown coat. Sometimes the emotions are too present and real for easy handling and the process we've been through or are going through with them is necessary. In these situations, especially when they drive us to want to make reactionary resolutions to never experience THAT again, it can be helpful to handle them with a bit of grace. For the purpose of making plans for the next year or quarter or even month, we can hold these in-motion events gently by stating "Yep, that happened". Allowing the acknowledgement and validation without engaging in the active emotions or need to fight/flight, even just within our own nervous system, can allow us to move into a more proactive space during planning.
Once we know where we are at personally, what we have to work with, and what we are leaving behind as "what was", we can then begin considering how we wish to live in and experience the new year. One of the most frightening, but exciting things to do is to explore what is possible if we ignore or even discard the templates and "shoulds" we have worked with so long. What if being a good person or living a spiritual life doesn't require us to survive a marriage which is abusive? What if our path is about advocating a healthy lifestyle starting with emotional wellbeing rather than weight loss? What if we focus on achieving a career goal rather than clinging to a stable job which sucks out our soul?
Examining the "shoulds" can often be a liberating or even transformative process in and of itself. If the measure by which we determine our self-worth is created out of expectations, desires, or requirements bequeathed to us by others, then our perceptions of our self, perhaps our core identity, may be completely wrong. Rather than finding ourselves lacking in one area or another we may instead be excelling in several, growing and improving in others, and have achieved miracles of survival. We may even be headed towards thriving without even realizing we're ready to be on the right track and move forward.
In reality, if we are the architect of our lives, then there is nothing broken about us at all. Our needs may have changed. Our style esthetic will have shifted with time. We may no longer need this room and instead want something else. We may need to convert a closet into spa bathroom for our master suite. We may now need stained glass windows and a grand staircase. The magic comes from realizing we are capable of making these changes. We have the budget. If we don't yet have the necessary know how, we will. Like all construction, plans translate into reality as the work meets the materials, as time and experience breathe life into us, creating beauty and wisdom.
So instead of setting ourselves up to fail with intentions lacking action plans or punishments dressed up as New Year resolutions, lets acknowledge the wisdom our soul's having been imparting to us and use it to create plans which support ourselves in moving one step further on the path to fully living. No need for radical transformation, unreachable goals, or dismantling what works. No blank pages or clean slates which ignore everything we are and try to force us into some logical but unlivable pretzel. Instead, lets pull out the beautiful topographical map of the universe we have brought into being as of today. There's plenty of raw materials to work with and lots of space in which to create the next masterpiece we will inhabit.