Finding an approach to truly meaningful change

Lost and Found

It’s the time of New Year resolutions and yearly plans once again. Whether or not we believe in making resolutions, many of us will be thinking about the changes we want to make in our routines so that we can lead better, more productive and happier lives.

Undoubtedly, these are important ideals to work toward and resolutions may help us get there. But, as anyone who has experimented with resolutions would know, many a time they take the form of superficial solutions.

This is not to disparage resolutions or those who make them, but merely to ask whether there is an approach that can facilitate the emergence of meaningful and deep change in our lives. In fact, this article is a quest to see whether the changes we want to bring about, including those on our wish lists, can be supported with the right attitude or orientation so that the endeavour becomes one of renewal, that of shedding old and encrusted ways of thinking, feeling and acting.

Before we come to what that could be, let’s look at how we approach change in the normal course. Say we are inundated by feelings of dissonance between what we set out to do and what we actually end up doing; or there is a general dissatisfaction with ourselves, others and the world at large; or we are gripped by an overall lack of meaning and purpose in what we do. When thinking of change, we try to find quick fixes to these ‘problems’, without contending with what these modes of responding are trying to tell us.

For instance, we might want to lose weight, or make more money, or quit smoking, but we don’t look at the reasons underlying these desires, which conceal our fears, our self-doubt, or our longings for a genuine connection with our selves.

When we try to deal with change in this manner, our attempts may run out of steam in a matter of days or weeks and leave us wondering whether change is at all possible for someone such as us.

Maybe that is why leading the list of resolutions this year should be something that will make it possible to examine our motivation and impulse for change itself. In fact, what we may need are spaces for stillness and reflection in our daily lives from where we can look at ourselves and our life situations with a degree of equanimity and distance. Although this seems like a fairly simple thing to do, it is not easy to do it in the crush of daily living. But taking this small step and reminding ourselves to keep going back to it may be indispensable if we want to come to grips with the stubborn habits that seem to define us.

What it does is to call on us to pause sufficiently, and view our thoughts and mental processes as though we were external to it, like a witness. This is analogous to the sakshi bhava or the ‘witness attitude’ of Vedantic thought or the practice of vipassana or ‘insight meditation’ in Buddhism.

What may we find if we take this step? In my explorations of my mind, I found certain patterns of thinking about myself and habits of closing myself off that were contributing to a tendency to anxiety and worry. These patterns of thought were so ubiquitous and visceral that they actually seemed to be ‘me’. Allowing myself to view them with some detachment brought me the understanding that I could find the right place for these thoughts in my life without indulging them. This also made it possible for me to attend to the feelings of anxiety that I had grown accustomed to without either denying them or giving in to them completely. Of course, I need to keep returning to this understanding whenever these difficult emotions come up.

Maybe, then, finding a measure of freedom from our compulsions, or the right perspective from which to view our losses, is the fundamental change we should aspire for in the New Year. Maybe this is the change that can set the stage for all the other changes we want to make, and allow us to explore our potential in its full scope. Not just in the sense of what we can do but also who we can be. That is, infinitely more than what the habits of thinking and feeling masquerading as our ‘selves’ suggest we are.

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