Resolution or Revolution

It’s that time of year, looking ahead to a new year, a fresh start. It’s time to make our resolutions.

Be honest. What was your immediate reaction when you read that? When I wrote it, I felt a knot in my stomach, my shoulders slumped, I held my breath. (As I wrote in the last post, holding your breath is a sign of stress.) Hmm, this can’t be good.

Frankly, I don’t make resolutions anymore. Anyone who is a resolution veteran will tell you that we don’t often keep them. By the end of January, many of us can’t remember what they were. If we think about them at all, it is usually because we fell short of our goals, and we feel guilty, ashamed, inadequate, weak.

So I am proposing a resolution revolution! Let’s overthrow a system that is not serving us and find one that will.

First, let’s consider why the current system is not working. It seems to me that most resolutions are promises that we think we should make, without much thought about whether they are promises we really want to make. Also, many of our resolutions are really about habits, either bad habits we want to quit, or good habits we want to develop. Habits can rarely be changed based on a single act of will. Finally, we often set up our resolutions as all or nothing goals. We either meet the goal 100% or we fail. Yikes!

So let’s revolutionize our system. Revolution means a turning, a complete change. Let’s turn the system on its axis until it supports us and sets us up for success.

1. Make commitments you really want to make.

Shoulds are not going to work. We have to want it. We have to want it more than we want the status quo. Here’s an example. I lived a good part of my life with some emotional habits that were not good for me. I knew I needed to make some changes, but I was afraid. Then one night I ended up in the emergency room with a pain in my abdomen (picture third chakra) that was so bad I thought I was going to die. The immediate physical suspects were quickly ruled out. They doped me up and scheduled me for a series of tests over the next several weeks. A week later I was back in the ER with the same symptoms. By then I knew that there was no physical cause. This was my cosmic wake up call. I decided right then and there that whatever I had to go through to make some changes in my life was less scary than experiencing that pain again.

Okay, that was a dramatic example. Sometimes we can achieve the same result by reframing the choice (and avoiding the trip to the ER). For example, maybe I don’t want to exercise as much as I want to sit and watch TV. But suppose my choice is between being incapacitated by poor health and being able to take a hike in the beautiful forest when I go to my cabin.

The point is to figure out what you really want and then frame your choice so that what you want is compellingly more desirable than what you have.

2. Focus on habits rather than on a goal.

Let’s be aware of our habits that serve us or hinder us. If we are not making progress on a goal, chances are there are some habits we are not addressing. (Gail Brenner has written a great post on becoming aware of our habits.)

Research shows that it takes about 21 days to change or to develop a habit. A church in Kansas City initiated a program to help the congregation break the toxic habit of complaining. Each member gets a purple plastic bracelet. Each time you catch yourself complaining, you switch the bracelet to the other wrist. The goal is to go 21 days without complaining. (Check out A Complaint Free World)

If we focus on our habits instead of a single goal, we are much more likely to make the changes we need to make to support our efforts instead of sabotaging ourselves. Instead of fixating on losing 50 pounds, we could focus on becoming aware of and changing our lifestyle habits.

As for specific techniques to change or develop habits, I will be writing about that frequently next year as I focus on each of the 10 steps to finding our happy place and staying there. But really, most of us have stopped a bad habit or developed a good one, so we already know how to do this. Think about what steps you went through.

3. Celebrate success.

We tend to focus on our shortcomings rather than our successes. Why is that? I don’t know. At any rate, that is a habit in itself that we can set out to change.

Going back to the complaint free church, part of the program is recognizing that if you beat yourself up every time you have to switch the bracelet to the other wrist, that is a form of complaint. Instead, give yourself credit for every minute you don’t have to switch the bracelet. Be your own cheerleader! Wow, I went five minutes that time! Way to go! The stated goal of being complaint free for 21 days is much less important that the awareness and effort made for 21 days.

One of my favorite stories is about Father Keating who started a practice called centering prayer. The idea is to choose a focus word, or centering word, that we can use when we find our mind wandering to call our attention back to our contemplative union with the divine. (It’s like using the word “thinking” in Buddhist mindfulness meditation.) Once, after a prayer session, a frustrated nun came up to the priest and complained, “I feel terrible! I must have had to say my centering word 1000 times.” Father Keating didn’t miss a beat. “That’s wonderful!” he exclaimed. “That’s 1000 times you were connected to God.”

So join with me this year and become a resolution revolutionary!