Robin's Musings

by Robin Hallett

It is a new year, and I have been thinking about all of the New Year’s resolutions I have made over the last decade. So often my resolutions were impossible to keep, because my goals were unrealistic… I had impossibly high expectations for myself. Looking back, my relatively low success rate doesn’t surprise me– I set the bar way too high for myself.

I started doing a little research into the most common New Year’s Resolutions. It seems that all over the globe, people are hoping to “fix” the same things:

1. Lose Weight/Get in Shape

2. Create a Budget/Get Out of Debt

3. Quit an Addiction: Smoking

4. Spend More Quality Time with Family

5. Get a New Job/Begin a New Career/Find My Passion

6. Get Organized

7. Find A Soul Mate/Make New Friends/Leave an Unhealthy Relationship

This list might seem harmless, even helpful. These goals are positive, generally speaking. And, it would be great if we could approach the goals gently, with humor and patience. But that isn’t how most of us handle our resolutions. We distort them, attaching all kinds of conditions to them, turning them into grandiose, unrealistic and poorly thought out resolutions. We don’t say we want to lose a few pounds gently over time… we say I am going to lose 20 pounds by Valentine’s day so I can look amazing in that special dress I haven’t been able to get into since high school. We raise the bar so high, we can’t help but fail.

When we start out with a resolution that already rejects something about who we are today in the present moment, how can we be fully on board? How can our spirit support us in a resolution that begins with the sentence, I look like a fat pig, I must lose weight so that I won’t feel ashamed of myself anymore. Resolutions often are packaged inside a negative premise: something is wrong with me that needs to be fixed. We express the resolution in terms of what we want to lose, stop, get rid of, do away with, end, curb, leave, shed… I could go on- each of those words have the power focusing on what is wrong, what is bad, what is unacceptable, what is negative, what is shameful.

When you grab your belly and say, I’ve got to do something about this- in that moment, you are focusing on a part of yourself that you cannot accept. Yet here you are, in the flesh, belly and all. The fact is, you are where you are. Shaming yourself into shape will never work.

What’s interesting about it is that while you grab your belly and say I’ve got to lose this, I’ve got to stop eating those yummy cookies and that delicious ice cream, your mind ignores the part about I’ve got to stop, and it zeros in on the part about delicious yummy ice cream and cookies… and the signal or the request gets made in your body for those things. That’s one important reason why we end up craving what we want to stop.

Instead of wording your New Year’s resolution as a loss or a sacrifice, why not express it as something positive or think of it as a new beginning? Make it something you want to incorporate into your life rather than eject from it. Instead of saying I will stop eating sweets, try I will begin to incorporate vegetables into my meals. Making the resolution positive, and about what is being added into your life, rather than what is being excluded from it.

If you were to make a banner for yourself- a sort of reminder to yourself about your goals for the year- would you want it to read: I am a big fat pig, I am on the verge of financial ruin, I must stop being lonely. Or would you want it to read: I am focusing on my health; I am attaining financial freedom, I am focusing on the perfect mate, friend, lover for me. How we frame it really matters.

Change the statements to something positive. If the goal is that you want to eat mindfully then say that: I want to eat mindfully – and I want to pay attention to how I feel when I am eating, I want to prepare my food lovingly. Let’s be realistic, it doesn’t have to be EVERY meal. Why? Part of being human and living on this planet is to enjoy the pleasures of life- and let’s face it sometimes pizza counts among those occasional pleasures so, why be so strict, so militant? It isn’t reasonable. It isn’t realistic. And, failure isn’t your goal, right?

So, be kind to yourself this year. Chuck the harsh resolutions right into the garbage can where they belong! It is time to respect all of who you are and usher in the new year with a little kindness and compassion, and maybe even a little pizza.