Resolutions and their funda

Life is precious, and since we want to make the best out of our life, we make New Year resolutions!

Unfortunately, a New Year’s resolution is a promise to stop doing everything one enjoys the most. A lady I know resolved to give up rich foods and poor boyfriends. Advice to men over 50: resolve to keep an open mind and a closed refrigerator.

Serious trouble comes when the New Year’s resolutions collide with old year’s habits. Trying to sustain your drive through a task, or even a career can sometimes feel like pulling yourself out of a swamp by your own hair. Some individuals do seem to have more stick-to-itiveness than others. Bouncy self-motivation is one of the main things that distinguishes high-achieving professionals from everyone else. Take a look at our New Year’s resolutions, whether it is trying to lose weight, save for retirement, give-up alcohol or smoking.

Umpteen times we have failed to reach the attainable goal due to procrastination — which one of us hasn’t? What is procrastination? It is a motivation to do the wrong thing! When we are working hard towards a goal, we typically have a burst of motivation at an early stage, and then slump in the middle, then we are most likely to stall out.

A resolution is always stronger at its birth than at any subsequent period. We seem to have a natural aversion to persistent efforts that no amount of inspirational posters on the walls can fix. People who made resolutions at the start of January, if they are pleasant ones to pursue, are more likely to still be following them in March.

If your resolutions are true to your Dharma, you will spontaneously attract the right things. The more you fear failure, the more you invite failure, because wherever your attention goes and your energy flows, that’s what you attract in your life. A bird would never fly if it feared the unbounded sky. A mother would never give birth to a child if she feared the pain of childbirth.

One way to live our life to the brim is by becoming bigger than our problems. Otherwise our outlook and our attitudes will continue to shrink and match the pettiness of such challenges.

As for me, my New Year resolution is — to give unsolicited advice to others! But advice is least heeded when most needed. Any man who has to ask for advice probably isn’t married. Interestingly, giving advice rather than asking for it maybe an even more effective way to overcome motivational deficits in oneself, because it spurs one into action. May your troubles this New Year be as short-lived as your resolutions!