The Resolution Makeover
The perennial New Year's Resolution is getting a makeover, and I'm glad for it. The old look was hard to keep up with, swathed in an attitude that we weren't good enough last year, so we better kick it up this year; we all know how that turned out. By February, we were exhausted and demoralized, and whatever habits we were seeking to change tended to creep back in, leaving many with the feeling that the new year got off to a false start.
We're familiar with a false start in football – when a player on the offensive team moves before the center sets the ball in motion. Occasionally, the whole offensive line moves before it should, and there's a comical montage on YouTube where the referees assign the penalty to "everyone but the center."
Let's be like the center.
From a poised and attentive place, we make a "true start" by simply assessing all that's present in whatever particular moment that has arisen. We take everything into stock - not the past everything or the future everything, but the "now" everything, and move from there with clarity, confidence, and ease.
In the current trend, New Years Resolutions have matured into compassionate reflections on presence, and uplifted intentions for skillful attitudes and actions going forward. Whatever you call it, the new year is a good time to be aware of what constitutes a true start - and it’s nothing that’s dictated by appearance, competition, low self-regard, or even by the calendar. In a true start, we can see that each moment is a new year, with 365 days ahead of us, whether you slice them up into months, weeks, hours, or breaths.
I remember a particularly rigorous hike with a friend which involved a big climb up a steep hill in blazing heat. She reminded me how unhelpful it would be to look toward the top (in the same way it's unhelpful to decide on January 1 what every day will be like until the next January 1). Instead, we focused exclusively on where our feet landed with each individual step, one at a time. It felt exceedingly doable and phenomenally free.
Happy New Year to each of you. May 2023 be full of true starts, centered in each moment, full of loving presence.
~ Annie Moyer