At the risk of sounding stern straight at the beginning of the new year, I would like you to take a moment and ask yourself;
- A: If you have made any new years resolutions? If so…
- B: Which is the level of intention with which you have made these resolution? And…
- C: What is your own expectation of remaining loyal to your own vows?
Perhaps there is no real nice way of saying this.
Perhaps it is simply true that 99% of all the new years resolution are forgotten within a fortnight, or even less.
In my experience resolutions only bear fruit when they are executed on the spot.
When we place them in the future, in the year to come, it is too easy for distractions to seep in and keep us from our newly set goals.
By making them ‘now-solutions’, changing our attitude towards something in the moment we decide to choose for it; we make it effective immediately, which is what I know I need, for else it is too easy for some temptation or another to divert me.
When I, for instance, resolve to go on a diet after the weekend, I run a risk to overeat during that weekend, while I’m still ‘allowed’.
Had I made it a now-solution, rather than a resolution, I would have kept away another 2 pounds.
Resolutions also often disappear in the chatter of every day life, if not in the tendency to indulge oneself; for that might well be the problem with resolutions; the level of mindful intention with which they are made.
Lots of what we do in daily life, is based on mere programming, habit, ‘the right thing to do.’ One of those habits is to set some refreshing intentions at the beginning of a new year; yet question is, do we actually intent to make them work?
Let’s be honest. Basically we are like children. When we get a chance to escape what we experience as a difficult task, we will forward good intentions to a later date.
The thing is though, that in the end…we are not so happy with ourselves, because in the end…we get very little done; (and believe me I know this from experience.) I have three unfinished books waiting for me and yet I seem to have an incredible ability to find other things to do.
Not because I do not like writing,- I love writing- , yet at the same time the art of writing requires for me to expose myself; to bring up the best in me; and for some reason, it often seems a lot easier to emerge myself in a pile of old movies or books to entertain myself with or to cook a nice meal, than to implore my creative talents to surface.
So today, I got up, did my morning rituals and sat down to start writing immediately. Only after, will I go for my walk, do my shopping and think about what I want to eat.
It might be tough, I might not even be inspired enough to get something decent on paper; but I will have worked; I will have tried, which is always a source for satisfaction…
Ingrid Schippers.
