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 signed up for new gym memberships. We checked out works of Great Literature from the library. read more purged our pantry of simple carbs and stocked through to wheat grass, tempeh, and kale. And 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 many people turn to self-flagellation, just in case we don't already feel bad enough: I'm lazy. I have no self-control. And today that I've blown it, I might as well spend all of those other year lying in bed, 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 way to torpedo an answer is by choosing something you think you must do but haven't any actual passion for doing (example: read Siddhartha after getting the kids to bed). Another solution to tank a resolution would be to pick one because someone else thinks it's a good idea. Which means 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 that you're more likely to exercise if you big money riding on the deal.

But mostly? Our resolutions bite the dust because although we have the best intentions on the planet to make solid, positive changes inside our lives, we have no actual, well-articulated plan for carrying these changes out, or for handling the inevitable stumbles on the path from here to there without quitting altogether. We want to lose 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 anatomies, or how much we might be relying on eating for comfort-so we will need to find alternative 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 our bodies or truly understanding that it will require 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 discuss. But instead of hearing our essential selves-what excites us to take into account? 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 Using Your DSLR Camera 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: whatever you call it, it is 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'll resist your attempts to accomplish things differently near the top of its screechy little voice.

Having an idea, getting support, knowing that you will have setbacks, and taking small, intentional steps toward your goals will quiet that voice, sufficient you can hear it for the frightened child it really 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's nothing magical about January 1. You've got all of those other year-heck, you've got the others of your life-to become the person you always knew you will 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. Have a look at her website and blog at
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