Here it is, the start of 2022, the season to be jolly is pretty much over and most of us are swinging into action making preparations for a positive year ahead. It’s all good stuff, strategic plans to never grow old, how to get back into the saddle, gain a bit more control and hit some new targets. The traditional next step is to begin making your New Year’s Resolution. Forgetting the fact that around 64% of these inspiring resolutions will be forgotten within a month, we can be forgiven for thinking that this is the year I’ll finally follow through with all those annoying challenges I made for myself last year. This year I’m really gonna make a difference.

Setting achievable goals is the clear winner out there if you’ve been online viewing the many stories designed to help you with making choices this year. Get your values straight, achieve certain benchmarks, set savings targets and make sure your goals are measurable. All excellent advice, particularly if you’re a bit younger say, under fifty years of age. If you’re older and entering the next generational age group you’ve no doubt made so many inspiring resolutions over time that you may have entered this particular new year feeling a bit jaded by all the hype.

Change is certainly reliable, the one constant, it never ceases, so when you sit down to pick something from your wishlist it can get a bit tricky, one must get in touch with the strongest emotion, understand it, take some quiet reflection and then dig deeper, especially as we’re all prone to taking the easy road out. We tend to replace our first impulse with something far less challenging. But wait, what if you had limited time left, it may be more sensible to consider what not to add, what’s not on your list could be a new way of thinking this through. This will have the immediate effect of shortening your choices. If you’ve reached a plateau then time is precious, perhaps your health is waning or romance has flown the coop. Resolutions only work with clarity and laser-like intention.

Have you ever noticed how hard you’ve been working to achieve your goals, maybe get that promotion, pay off the debt or lose more weight etc…and here it comes, something unexpected shows up to throw you off course, a simple little thing that can make us abandon our dreams and all our good intentions end up getting thrown overboard. This revolving door keeps us stuck looking in the wrong mirror, facing the wrong way. Certain truths emerge as we grow older, the new meme is to seek at any cost, a ‘work-life balance’ – so the idea goes: “when I have finally achieved everything I planned for I will be in control of my life” that’s supposed to be the time I get to relax, be myself and enjoy life as it comes along. But the future never arrives and change always beats you there. To become the person you want is really hard when your attention is focused elsewhere.

Main Image – Unsplash Mohamed Nohassi – Above Image Mark Nguyen

Resolutions made in the sanctity of a religious space can give us a positive image of ourselves when attempting to move forward with our lives. But, we tend to trip over our inbuilt anxiety of running out of time – it keeps us living inside the Matrix, in a world that’s not entirely real, stuck on repeat, always needing to be more productive, striving to be busier, more practical, more stimulating, more beautiful whilst all the time it’s simply hollowing us out. We are trying so hard not to miss out on our lives that unforgivably, it’s passing us by and we simply don’t notice it’s happening.

If there was a New Years Resolution worth considering it could be what choices should I be discarding. All of us have good coping strategies to ‘fill in time’ whilst we prepare to work on the good stuff, later on, you know, when we finally get into the driver’s seat. But the reality is simple, we are all humans and by definition our time is limited. We get angry very quickly when we recognise this fact –  we’re experts at throwing tantrums when we don’t get what we want, believing we deserve to have it all. The ever fading mirage we believe to be true.

Mindfulness is many things, deciding that our own mortality exists is one truth, a fact we desperately wish to avoid. An authentic life is only possible if this truth becomes our starting point, being alive is so precious, it’s all that counts in the end. A misdirected resolution can ultimately be a big fat distraction from the real work of acceptance. We are part of the universe, not separate from it, not able to control it, we have been placed in the mix exactly where we are supposed to be, so let’s get back into this exciting game of being alive in the garden of Eden because it’s never really gone anywhere.

If we were to truly accept our place in the world we would not need resolutions or be manipulated into thinking we must conform to someone else’s rubbish, the very idea that we need a reboot in order to make us perform better is such a con job, but we all fall for it. We get to a bottleneck and then we go look in the mirror and don’t like what we see. Perhaps religion can help us ease the pain, or genuine faith and better ethics may work, but if we are still convinced we need to be someone different, someone, other than who I am, then any resolution will fall short of the target. The season to be jolly has passed, it would be wise for us to stop wasting our time trying to figure out what is impossible to know or fully understand, what’s in front of us is real. The clocks are ticking and another year will pass, being honest about the choices we know will make a difference is truly empowering. It’s never too late to live joyfully and without fear, now that’s an interesting resolution.