Resolutions Reconfigured

​It’s that time of year when, for no other reason than flipping a page on the calendar, we feel compelled to make proclamations about what we will and won’t do in the coming twelve months.

​We’ll replace our old, slothful habits with shiny, new diet and exercise regimens. We’ll be kinder, calmer, more generous and patient. We’ll work harder, or work less, depending on our situations and motivations. We’ll see new places and learn new things.

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​In short, we’ll be far more fabulous in 2019 than we were in 2018. 

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​​It’s an appealing fantasy, and I’ll admit, in past years I’ve made long lists of goals that ranged from personal improvement (find positive ways to deal with conflict; let go of resistance and cultivate lightness) to artistic (make a dozen new collages; take a dance class; write a poem every day) to niggling tasks (keep up on paperwork and email; sell or donate excess stuff).

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​The trouble was, year after year, I grossly overestimated the amount of free time and energy I’d have to devote to all my aspirations and underestimated the time that would be taken up with doing the same old, necessary things week after week. I also tended not to take into account how little enthusiasm I'm able to generate for such tedious tasks as the aforementioned paperwork and email.

​Reviewing my list at the end of each year became an exercise in frustration. While I made progress on a number of projects and even finished some, I found myself carrying many of my goals forward onto the next year’s list, year after year after year. 

​​So just as I scrapped my bucket list, I resolved to stop making resolutions.

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​Still, a new year seems to warrant some kind of intention-setting ritual, even if it’s nothing more than a mental exercise. In that spirit, I’m making a new kind of list, a modest tally of five things I want to carry forward with me from last year into this year and five things I want to let go because they no longer serve me (if they ever did).

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​Here goes . . . 

FIVE THINGS I WANT TO BRING WITH ME FROM 2018:

• A sense of possibility. I’ll have more to say on this subject in a future blog post, but for now I’ll just say that if I learned anything in 2018, it was to approach every situation in which the outcome is uncertain with an attitude of possibility—an openness to the idea that things just might turn out far better than you dare to dream. I’m convinced there’s magic in that mindset.

• My yoga and meditation practices. For years, I resolved to make meditation and yoga daily habits. For years, I just couldn’t make the habits stick. Then, all of a sudden, they did. Now they’re as much a part of my morning routine as making my breakfast oatmeal. Some days I spend more time than others on the mat and in my meditation chair, but every day is better when I take time for these practices.

• ​Focus. ​For the past month, I’ve been doing guided meditations aimed at improving my ability to focus, not in the hard way of intense concentration, but in a softer, more fluid way. I undertook this partly because, with the publication of my memoir on the horizon, I know I’m going to need as much focus as I can muster to tweak and proofread the manuscript, promote the book, and address the myriad other details that go along with authorship these days. But I’ve also been focusing on focus because I’ve become so scattered lately—my mind always going in half a dozen unrelated directions. While I know that tendency goes hand-in-hand with creativity, it can also get in the way of actually getting anything done.

• Connections to friends. ​​I’ve always valued friendship, but with every passing year I treasure my friends more and look forward to the time we spend together, whether face to face, on the phone, or even on Facebook. They lift me up when things aren’t going right and celebrate with me when they are. Most of all, they show me by example how to be a friend.

• Love and laughter. Oh, how these sustain me. I feel blessed to have had both through the years, and an extra big helping in this chapter of my life, thanks to all the good people around me, and especially that guy named Ray.​

FIVE THINGS I WANT TO LET GO OF:

• Excess stuff. I realize this is one of those action items that gets carried forward year after year, but it’s one I’m determined to keep working at. Last year I made great progress in purging excess paper. I cleaned out ancient files, overstuffed loose leaf notebooks, and magazines I had to admit I would never get around to reading. It was liberating. Yet every time I open a cabinet or closet, I see other kinds of stuff that needs to go. It’s amazing: we’ve lived in this house for not quite seven years, and I spent at least a year getting rid of things before we moved, so I thought we were pretty pared down. How we’ve accumulated so much since then is a mystery to me.

• Fear. Given the world we live in, fear is an entirely rational response. It’s also a fairly useless response unless you’re in an immediately threatening situation. That’s almost never the case for me; my worries are usually about things that haven’t happened yet and may never happen. What a waste. So from now on, when I find myself pointlessly worrying, I’m going to try instead to come up with some specific, constructive action I can take to address the area of concern—writing a letter, making a donation, or pitching in to help with a problem.​

• Addiction to news and novelty. ​​I thought not owning a smart phone made me immune to this affliction. Then I discovered I could do everything except make phone calls with my iPod. Uh-oh. Remember what I said above about starting every day with yoga and meditation? Sounds serene, doesn’t it? It would be if I hadn’t also developed the habit of scanning New York Times headlines and scrolling through my inbox before or just after my morning practice. Is there anything--anything—more counterproductive to serenity? I am determined to shed this routine and confine my news and email perusing to later in the day.

• Impatience. I used to be such a patient person. Then, all those years of tight deadlines wound me up into a ball of can’t-wait-need-it-now-ness that spilled over from the workplace into the rest of my life. Add to that a propensity to always have a million projects underway or on the want-to-do list, and you’ve got the makings of one antsy scatterbrain. That would be me. I’m hoping that focus I referred to above will help me discard this trait.

• Expectations. You might think this contradicts my first item under “Things I Want To Bring With Me.” Wasn’t that all about expecting better outcomes? Not exactly. As I see it, there’s a difference between expecting something to happen and being open to the possibility of it happening. Because in the latter case, you’re also open to the possibility of something entirely different—and unexpected—happening. So instead of expecting the best (or expecting the worst—see “Fear” above), my aim is to dispense with expectations—of situations, people, places, even myself—and just see what unfolds.

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What do you want to hold onto and get rid of in 2019?
Do you have your own year-end or year-beginning rituals? 

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 All images used with this post are free-use stock images.