Notes

New Year's Resolutions - A DIFFERENT 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 most of our New Year's resolutions. We tried-oh, how 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 through to wheat grass, tempeh, and kale. Yet here most of us are, a month later: still flabby, ill-read, and guiltily filching our children Ritz Bitz snack packs and eating handfuls of Lucky Charms from the box.

What on earth happened?

Now here's where most 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 now 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 make of loser, but because the resolutions were doomed from the start. An especially common solution to torpedo an answer is by choosing something you imagine you ought to do but have no 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. So you join a gym because your BFF says it's where all the moms follow elementary school drop-off. Or your husband got a deal on a family group membership. Or as you read somewhere you are more likely to exercise if you've got a lot of cash riding on the deal.

But mostly? Our resolutions bite the dust because although we have the best intentions on the globe to make solid, positive changes in our lives, we've no actual, well-articulated arrange for carrying these changes out, or for handling the inevitable stumbles on the road from here to there without giving up altogether. We want to shed weight, so we make an effort to deny ourselves our favorite foods without ever addressing our beliefs about food, our fear and loathing of our bodies, or how much we may be relying on eating for comfort-so we're going to 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 obtain from your body we now have to the body we wish. We want to expand our minds, learn new things, and also have fresh ideas to discuss. But instead of listening to our essential selves-what excites us to take into account? What articles, authors, blog writers, podcasts, even TV shows light us up?-we dutifully make an effort to plow through some freshman lit reading set of the great classics.

Change is good. But change is hard. That's because there's an actual section of our brains whose entire job it is to make sure we don't change anything. Call it the lizard brain, call it the amygdala, call it your social self: whatever you call it, it's the section of you that seeks to protect you by keeping you in your safe place. It likes everything just as it is. And it will resist your attempts to do things differently at the top of its screechy little voice.

Having a plan, getting support, knowing that there will be setbacks, and taking small, intentional steps toward your targets will quiet that voice, sufficient that you can hear it for the frightened child it really is. There, t here , it is possible to tell it. I've got this. You go off and play in the corner over there. Me, I'm going to make some really cool stuff happen. And you will. Really, truly. There's nothing magical about January 1. You've got the rest of the 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 specializing in "second acts," midlife course corrections, if you will, designed to assist you to dig deep, dream big, and find the life you're meant to live. Check out her website and blog at http://lifeworkscoaching.com/
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