Speaking into New Year's Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve never liked them much.
Gym memberships soar and a couple of months later… Are you still going to that 8am class?
Sound familiar?
Was the 'resolution' deeply important for you, or just one of those ideas?
I’ve made resolutions to do things and they’ve simply stacked up as ‘good ideas', lacking the body and commitment to bring them into form. I know when it’s just an idea, because it doesn’t sustain. It remains an idea in the over-stacked drawer of my dreams. You may have souvenirs of these ideas; things you bought and felt a brief fizz about then used once or forgotten; or a project left on the shelf, the energy for it dying in you at the first obstacle.
Ideas begin and end their lives in our heads.
At the club where I practice yoga, this has been an annual ritual. Classes are full in January, many lured by an externalised idea of body health, and yet by the end of February there’s only a few of those enthusiastic starters left.
Three years ago, I made a commitment to record an album of new songs I’d written. It took 24 months to bring this project to fruition within which there were commitments to new practices, benchmarks for improvement as part of the creative process, and a committed accountability to others.
We can say that I embodied the commitment. That is - I lived it.
What commitments are you living in?
Get curious about what you promise yourself this year. Will you speak this declaration? And if you do, where does the energy come from in your body? Does it come from a centred place? Does it have guts or ground? How do you feel when you say it out loud?
I’ve recently been working with a mentor who celebrates my commitments with me when I fulfil on them. This is such an important part of any serious growth process, to have a teacher, coach or mentor to have our backs when we step courageously forward, often in deep vulnerability, with the changes we want to make.
So perhaps this year, rather than resolve to do something, or have an idea that you know you will struggle to fulfil on, how would it be to begin to embody a commitment? This could be a professional, personal or spiritual declaration. Remember you live the commitment by taking new actions from a centred place, and, with practice, these new actions will re-shape you.
You become the change.
