New Year's Resolutions

As we welcome in this new year, 2007, we are probably all thinking about our new year's resolutions - that over-rated (and under-rated) and often rather self-conscious annual convention where we commit to breaking a habit or setting a positive goal for our lives. And how many times have we made that resolution and then become disillusioned within a week, or a couple of days, (or a couple fo hours!?) when we seem to have betrayed it and reverted to the old habit or become disheartened about our goal. So what's going on here? I've been thinking about this over the holidays and it occurs to me that the whole project of making a resolution is marred by the fact that we turn it into something we have to live up to, a standard we have to reach, something we really want to achieve but believe we probably wont because we know how we've been in the past around it and we judge the likelihood of it actually happening based on our track record. All the hope of the resolution seems to drain away the first time you have that first joint, cigarette or chocolate bar, miss the first yoga class, get angry with your partner, forget to meditate or oversleep. It seems to me that what we tend to do is to set up ourselves up to fail! We make a promise to ourselves, then we break our word - the problem is (and this really is the only problem) we then we beat ourselves up for breaking it! The resolution becomes just another stick to beat ourselves with. We will then tend to discredit the whole idea of making resolutions in the first place or simply discredit ourselves for been unable to keep a commitment. We throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

So I'd like to suggest an important distinction when it comes to resolutions, whether they are new year's resolutions or not. The distinction is between keeping your word and honouring your word. Simply defined, the keep your word is do what you said you would do. To honour your word is to be willing to acknowledge the commitment you made and be prepared to re-commit to your resolution even if you break your word. If we were bind ourselves to keeping our word, we set ourselves up to fail. However, if we commit to honouring our word, then even when we don't keep our commitment, we can still be honouring it, providing we can acknowledge that we haven't kept it and then re-commit to the resolution. This is one of several keys to successful resolution making. Honour the resolution, and honour yourself as the resolution maker, and recognise that even if you don't keep your word in a particular situation, this does not have to undermine either yourself or the resolution.

The problem with making resolutions annually, conventionally at the time of the new year, is that it heaps the pressure on you to keep to it - like you've only got one chance a year to make a change, one window of opportunity. This is patently absurd, of course. A resolution is powerful if it can become a daily practice. By making your resolution a daily one, rather than an annual one, you can begin again each morning, re-stating your resolution, your commitment, your vision, regardless of what may or may not have happened around it the previous day. It is through buidling a sustainable practice that you will bring your resolution about, not through some glorified, one time event.

I don't want to knock the idea of a new year resolution - I have made very clear resolutions myself this year - but I have made them within a ritual setting, witnessed by a group of trusted friends and each of us have made commitments to support each other throughout the year to encourage those commitments to bear fruit. I have written these resolutions on a piece of paper and they sit on my altar and I am revisiting them each morning.

One other thing I'd like to say about resoltuions, is that it is undoubtedly better to focus upon the feeling of being in your new reality (free of your craving, or self-sabotage pattern). Better to imagine the sense of freedom and possibility that being in that new reality will afford, rather than just say "I'm going to stop smoking" or "I'm going to lose weight". If you set it up with the focus on what you want to get rid of, you are focussing on the perceived problem. Focus on the new reality, on what you want. If you can really imagine what it would feel like to be a stone lighter, rather than focussing on the weight itself, you are likely to be much more inspired and much less under pressure to lose weight.

A very joyful and prosperous new year to all!

love John x