New Year's Resolutions
As far as we’re concerned, any effort to look at your life clearly and pursue a clearer, healthier path is a good effort. One of our gifts is our ability to take a look at ourselves and see – or feel – how our reality differs from our dreams and perceptions. We can do more than wait for trial and error to show us the way – we can take stock, imagine a new way, plan and work our way there.
The problem with resolutions is not that we can’t keep them – it is that we so often fail or refuse to see ourselves for who we are. We may spend every day wishing we were different than we are – almost as though we wished we were a different person. That is a destructive wish. No matter how much struggle and suffering we have been through, we have countless choices we can make that address some important possibility of our own soul. We have tools we never have used; dreams we have feared were too difficult, or that we don’t deserve to fulfill.
The best New Year’s resolution may be to finally take ourselves seriously – not to be “serious”, as in negative and critical – but listen to our heart, to find a path to health and love, to stop being our own worst critic. There is nothing really special about the New Year except that it reminds us of new beginnings, of transition. This can be sad, but we can choose what part of a transition to pay attention to. When we have taken stock, felt sorry about the things we would like to have done differently, remembered those we miss or who we have wronged, it is then time to look ahead. What do you want? What change have you wanted to pursue for so very long but never achieved the proper motivation? Who needs a bit more love this year?
Talking to a counselor can be a great part of the New Year’s Resolution. If you need help hearing your own heart a bit more clearly, if you need to clear the way for growth and self-improvement, we will listen and offer our years of experience in guiding people through the fog, helping them fix their relationships, cope with chronic suffering and realize the gift that is the freedom we have to play a big part in our own destiny. Your life will unfold whether you participate or not. Why not use the start of the new year to join in your own life, as the painter, singer, author or quarterback of your destiny?
