Let’s Resolve to Evolve in the New Year

I originally wrote the article below for the Mountain Mirror. http://www.mountainmirror.com/

It’s that time of year. Between our tendency to vegetate in our homes during the winter and all the holiday parties and family gatherings, we have likely accumulated a few pounds. And so, it’s time to consider a new year’s resolution, so we can fit back into our clothes and recover from the stress of the holidays. But in the last few years, I hear more and more friends and family, share with me that they are not making a yearly resolution. They confess to me that their new year’s goals never work, and so why bother? I can resonate with them, when I look back at the many intentions I have made during a brand new year that unfortunately led to me backsliding within a month. Mark Twain once joked, “New Year’s Day is now the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” And yet, despite my own tendency to break these New Year’s intentions, I am learning it is crucial to be people in formation who are always seeking to set new goals, so that we are on a journey of growth instead of stagnation.

I often wonder why it is that I have been so much better at keeping a 40 day commitment during the religious season of Lent, than I ever seem to be with my New Year’s vows. Last year, I made it from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday without any sugar (no kidding), which was quite a feat for me! But when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, we often fall short of our goals and I believe that this is simply because committing to do something for 365 days is much more difficult than committing to do something for the next month or the next day.

If you are in the “why bother” camp, in terms of New Year’s resolutions, I would encourage you to reconsider your skepticism of this practice. In his book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, Tom Corley interviewed over 200 successful and wealthy people, to find 7 habits they had in common and one of these seven routines was setting goals. Corley found that 80% of the people he interviewed set daily and long-term goals regularly. C.S. Lewis said, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” I too believe we should always be in the practice of reevaluating our personal goals and I think the New Year is a great time to recommit ourselves to continuing to work on becoming the best possible version of ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Several years ago, I was attending a yoga class during the New Year and the teacher spoke about sankalpa, an Indian Sanskrit word, which translates resolve or intention. Until this class, I was always confused when a yoga teacher would talk about setting an intention at the beginning of a yoga practice. But during this yoga class, the teacher explained that sankalpa was about setting goals that would help us to grow in mind, body, and spirit, both on and off our yoga mats. And so, when I set a resolution at the beginning of a yoga class, I might choose to be kinder to myself and others, to challenge myself to be more adventurous, or to work at letting go of a grudge.

But we don’t have to be a yogi, to be in the practice of setting on-going intentions. All of us should commit ourselves to resolve to evolve. In fact, our new year’s intention can be as simple as making a resolution to the process of evolution and we can start this life-long process by considering one goal we have today that will help us grow spiritually, emotionally, or physically and then we must commit to it today. Tomorrow we can reevaluate what we need to do in order to be the best version of ourselves and maybe our intention will be to set a new goal or maybe we will decide to keep working on the one(s) we set yesterday.

It is also important to remind ourselves to have a balance between goals for our mental, spiritual, and physical well-being. We live in a nation where we are more obsessed with being physically fit than just about anything. But having a soft heart should be more important than having hard abs, but unfortunately magazines and television tell us otherwise. And our narrow sighted focus on our physique, has led to an ego-driven society that is mean-spirited and individualistic. To combat this, it is important for our intentions to be holistic ones that involve all aspects of us. It is time for a cultural revolution, where we not only set goals regarding exercise or diet, but goal-setting should involve our spiritual commitments and intellectual pursuits. This means our intentions will not only include losing a few pounds, but reading a book that challenges us or practicing acceptance of ourselves and others.

We must remind ourselves that change doesn’t happen overnight and so we must be gentle with ourselves if we don’t always follow through with our resolutions. We can reiterate to ourselves the intention we are resolving to change and recommit ourselves to this practice. Let’s also be mindful that the process of setting an intention (sankalpa) can be something we do, not just in the New Year, but in each new day. So maybe during our daily routine of brushing our teeth, in the morning and at night, we can ponder our current goals but also new possible intentions. We can allow our resolutions to change organically, but hopefully we will commit to asking ourselves everyday what we need to be doing to become the best version of ourselves physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. Perhaps we can post reminders of our goals on our computer or share them with friends so they can keep us accountable. G.K. Chesterton reminds us, “The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.” So in this New Year, will we resolve to evolve so that we can have new minds, bodies, and spirits?

Happy New Year,

Christy