Notes

New Year's Resolutions - Another One Bites the Dust
It's February, the month of romantic love, the weather-related predictions of groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, and the ritual abandonment of all of our New Year's resolutions. We tried-oh, how exactly we tried. We enrolled in new gym memberships. We checked out works of Great Literature from the library. We purged our pantry of simple carbs and stocked up on wheat grass, tempeh, and kale. Yet here most of us are, per month later: still flabby, ill-read, and guiltily filching our kids Ritz Bitz snack packs and eating handfuls of Lucky Charms out of the box.

What the heck happened?

Now here's where many of us turn to self-flagellation, just in case we don't already feel bad enough: I'm lazy. I've no self-control. And today that I've blown it, I would as well spend the rest of the year lying during intercourse, reading cheesy celebrity magazines and stuffing my face with Ho Ho's.

No, back up. What on earth really happened?

Most resolutions fail not because you're some spectacular brand of loser, but as the resolutions were doomed from the start. An especially common solution to torpedo a resolution is by choosing something you imagine you ought to do but haven't any actual passion for doing (example: read Siddhartha after obtaining the kids to bed). Another way to tank a resolution is to pick one because another person thinks it's wise. Which means you join a gym because your BFF says it's where all the moms follow elementary school drop-off. Or check here got a deal on a family membership. Or because you read somewhere that you're more prone to exercise if you a lot of money riding on the deal.

But mostly? Our resolutions bite the dust because although we've the best intentions on the globe to create solid, positive changes in our lives, we have no actual, well-articulated arrange for carrying these changes out, or for handling the inevitable stumbles on the road from here to there without quitting altogether. You want to lose weight, so we make an effort to deny ourselves well known foods without ever addressing our beliefs about food, our fear and loathing of our anatomies, or how much we might be counting on eating for comfort-so we will need to find other activities that bring similar joy.

We want to be more fit, so we throw ourselves at an ambitious fitness plan without considering what types of movement feel good to your bodies or truly understanding that it will take slow, small, intentional turtle steps to get from the body we currently have to the body we wish. We want to expand our minds, learn new things, and have fresh ideas to talk about. But instead of hearing our essential selves-what excites us to think about? What articles, authors, blog writers, podcasts, even Television shows light us up?-we dutifully make an effort to plow through some freshman lit reading list of the great classics.

Change is good. But change is hard. That's because there's an actual part of our brains whose entire job it really is to be sure we don't change anything. Call it the lizard brain, call it the amygdala, call it your social self: anything you call it, it's the section of you that seeks to safeguard you by keeping you in your comfort zone. It likes everything in the same way it is. And it'll resist your attempts to do things differently at the top of its screechy little voice.

Having an idea, getting support, understanding that there will be setbacks, and taking small, intentional steps toward your goals will quiet that voice, just enough that you could hear it for the frightened child it truly is. There, there, it is possible to tell it. I've got this. You go off and play in the corner over there. Me, I'll make some awesome stuff happen. And you'll. Really, truly. There is nothing magical about January 1. You have all of those other year-heck, you've got the rest of your life-to become the person you always knew you could be.

Laura McReynolds is a certified life coach focusing on "second acts," midlife course corrections, in the event that you will, designed to assist you to dig deep, dream big, and discover the life you're meant to live. Check out her website and blog at http://lifeworkscoaching.com/
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