New Year's Special: The Proper Care of Resolutions

Resolutions are expressions of our personal power - our ability to decide what we'll do. How has your experience with New Year's resolutions been? If you're like most people, it's been spotty. In this episode, we look at some of the reasons why. More importantly, we look at three strategies to consider to improve our level of personal power.

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New Year's Special: The Proper Care of Resolutions

How do you feel about making New Year's resolutions? Do you think they're a good idea even though it's common that people fail to maintain them? One of the problems in sticking with our resolutions is our approach. When we want to make positive changes in our lives, we're more likely to succeed when we take them on with an unshakeable resolve, and that's where we can often fall short.

When we want to make positive changes in our lives, we're more likely to succeed when we take them on with an unshakable resolve.

If we don't quite have sufficient focus and alignment, we're better advised to nourish our resolve before we write checks that we're not ready to cash. Our resolutions will then tend not to correspond with the beginning of a new year or any other arbitrary date but with the very moment we achieve that mental state in which we simply won't accept any other outcome.

This new year, let's look at the path to that most powerful mental place. Sometimes the required resolved mentality is born of some dramatic event or crisis. While painful, it can also include seeds for personal growth and transformation. Is dramatic change possible without such drama? Yes, but it's not easy. It takes tremendous clarity and strength of character.

Our paths can also be smooth through sound strategy. That's what we talk about in the show and this episode is no different in that regard. Whenever we decide to make a change and use resources such as the eye of power, the implication is that we are pushing toward something. We're in place A and we wish to be in place B. There's nothing wrong with this.

It's part and parcel of why we're in this world but does pushing alone always work? No. When we exert ourselves, expending energy to make changes that run contrary to habits we have already established, there's more than one strategy available to us. We push but we can also choose to pull. A third option is also available. We can do neither. Let's look at these three strategies to better discern what is appropriate in what circumstances.

Pushing is an obvious first resort way we use our power. We push through obstacles to reach a goal with sufficient force, energy, and resolve. Few obstacles can stop us. One such obstacle can be pain. We push through pain sometimes to heal such as when rehabbing an injury. Pushing infers an outward flow of energy. It's us doing. We know we want something to happen so we act to make that happen yet there are times when we simply can't push the blockage, physical or mental. It may simply be too much to overcome with that strategy. In those cases, we must find another path.

Pulling, in the sense we're considering it here, is the opposite of pushing. It's receiving energy. That energy is usually from other people though it doesn't have to be. Pulling is recruiting active agents or people to our cause. It differs from pushing in an important way. Once set in motion and aligned along sympathetic outcomes, other energy sources begin to push on our behalf even if we're not.

Perhaps the highest form of pulling is the ability to inspire other people to take mutually beneficial action. This is a hallmark of great leadership. Pulling happens when we are striving for outcomes that exceed our personal interests. This means our goals are sufficiently big to include the desires of others. Let's look at an example. Weight loss, for instance.

New Year Resolutions: Perhaps the highest form of pulling is the ability to inspire other people to take mutually beneficial action. This is a hallmark of great leadership.

How does my waistline matter to anyone else? An obvious answer is our primary partner. There's a person who is invested in us, how we look and feel, and our longevity and quality of life. Pulling can get them invested in our outcomes so they change their expectations around meals. They don't stock the pantry with empty calories. They join us in exercise or fasting habits.

Another example of pulling in this case would be to hire a personal trainer, a health coach, a personal chef, and/or a nutritionist. Their goals are to produce results for their clients. When we become a client, our goal and their goals come into alignment. This may seem rather obvious but so many people struggle with this and other such issues. They miss the obvious pull strategy as they continue unsuccessfully to push.

I do want to mention a negative aspect of the pulling strategy. If we manipulate others to harness their energy for our needs irrespective of the ends they need, we may achieve our initial goal but the cost will outweigh the benefit. This is a moral archetype that is addressed in all the wisdom traditions in the world. The dynamic also informs much of our mythology.

Vampires, succubi, and incubi embody the monstrous aspect of pulling and stealing energy from others. While there's power in such strategies, true peace and satisfaction are not available to monsters. These are tragic figures. What seems to be less intuitive and less common, especially in the business climate of the Western world, is the idea of neither pushing nor pulling.

If we're doing neither, are we doing nothing? Not necessarily. Here is the place of acceptance, deep listening, and openness to the new, the novel, and the fresh. It gives us the chance to notice things we might otherwise miss as we barrel forth to our goals. Sometimes what we miss matters a lot. In those cases, we may find we accomplished our initial goal only to find it didn't bring the benefit we hoped it would. In this place where we're neither projecting nor receiving energy, it's often said we're being, as in being a human being, not a human doing.

It's a place of restoration. Restoration is a requirement of life. It's what in essence sleep is. If you consider the phenomenon of sleep from an evolutionary perspective, it's quite remarkable. Though the manner and duration vary, every animal without exception sleeps. The need for sleep is expensive, energetically speaking. Sleeping creatures can't find food, find a suitable mate, or protect themselves from threats. Considering the cost, why is sleep such a universal strategy? You got it. Restoration.

Restoration is a requirement of life.

Life forms are among other potential descriptive axes of energy exchange mechanisms. We all take in energy in the form of nutrients, food, water, and air and translate that energy into physiological function, which invariably includes the survival of the species and the expulsion of waste products. The beauty of the whole system is that some life forms' waste is other life forms' food. Other life forms are the food of other life forms too.

Nevertheless, the process, whatever steps and forms it takes, requires regular extended periods of restoration, and we humans need our sleep like all other animals. Is sleep the only means by which we experience restoration? No. We are nourished in many ways. Some of that is pursuing things we find spiritually rewarding. Those activities are characterized by a rise in our energy levels but are also important to stillness not only of the body but also of the mind.

To illustrate, I invite you to try a little experiment with me. If you're able, stand up. Bring your legs together so they're touching along their whole length. Straighten your spine. In other words, stand as tall as you can. Lower your chin a little so that the skin on the back of your neck stretches smoothly. Try to picture a straight vertical line from the arches of your feet, up through your legs, straight up your spine, and out the top of your head. Try to make that line as straight as possible. Relax your hands, palm facing forward at your sides.

Here's the exercise part. Stand as still as you can and see if you can cease the tiny shifts of your weight that might be happening in your feet. Try to hold everything motionless. If a T-Rex saw you fidget even a little, it would snatch you in its jaws. Keep trying. Relax. Congratulations. You completed one of the most important poses in yoga, the mountain pose.

Were you able to be still? It's not that easy. We could all use more control over ourselves, both our bodies and our minds. Peak power corresponds to greater control. It's worth the effort to build this ability. That's why the practice of neither pushing nor pulling but simply being is important. It can be a time when the significance of what you think you want either expands or contracts. You become freer and more powerful to direct your energy in productive ways.

New Year Resolutions: The practice of neither pushing nor pulling but simply being is important.

If you are in a place where you know you will stick with your plan for positive change, by all means, make that New Year's resolution and go for it but don't deceive yourself. You know the difference between the mindsets. If you hope to stick with it but you're not sure whether you will or won't, it's time to nurture your resolve. You may want to consider using all three strategies of pushing, pulling, and neither.

There are plenty of mental exercises that may be of great value to you. Much of what we talk about in the show pertains to this. Go back to past episodes and stay tuned for future ones, scheduled every Tuesday for 2023. Please, don't hesitate to reach out. It's time to manifest all of your power and your agency. It's time to give the world the best you possibly can. Let's go.