Making realistic resolutions

MAXINE COHEN

We’ve made it all the way, folks, past Thanksgiving, Hanukkah,

Christmas and New Year’s.

Some years ago, a study on stress found that Americans fear their

relatives during the holidays more than they fear tax time. So what

do you want for yourself in the new year? Have you given it some

thought? Do you know?

And how are you going to go about making your wants happen? Have

you thought about that? Do you know?

Which, of course, brings me to the topic of New Year’s

resolutions. The ultimate wish list for ourselves. I think I can, I

think I can, I think I can -- until just a few weeks into January,

when I think I can’t.

I’m not a big fan of resolutions. Resolutions meaning, “I pledge

that I am going to make this happen come hell or high water.” I

figure, if you want to make something happen, you’re going to make it

happen, and you don’t need the end of one year and the beginning of

another to do it.

But that’s just me. And therein lies the very reason I don’t make

resolutions anymore. I have such an anal personality anyway that

making a list would push me right over the edge, without passing go,

straight into obsessive-compulsive. Certainly not what I want to do

to myself.

What I do instead is think about what I wish for so I can bring my

attention to that and invest it with energy, which will increase the

likelihood that it may happen.

But everyone is different. And for some people, it’s really

helpful to write down specific things. It’s a way of staying focused

and on task. It’s a way of mobilizing their will to make sure they

don’t forget, to make things happen and follow through.

The only danger with that is that it can be a setup for failure

and disappointment. Too often, our resolutions reflect the disparity

between who/how we really are and who/how we’d like to be instead --

the difference between our real selves and our ideal selves. We set

up expectations that reflect our ideal conception of ourselves and

that we can’t possibly meet, which ensures that we will feel bad

about ourselves when we don’t meet them.

But the failure is in the setup, not in the doing, because the

unrealistic expectations are a reflection of the fact that we’re

already feeling bad about ourselves.

We’ve already judged ourselves -- too little, too big, not

adequate, incompetent, not right enough, you-fill-in-the-blank.

Negative, negative, negative.

The fact is, if we want to incorporate more of the characteristics

of our ideal conception of ourselves, the way to do this is through

becoming more of who we already are.

I know this is an esoteric concept, because we are so conditioned

in this society to exert our will, to try to “push the river,” to be

persistent, to advocate in our own behalf, often to outright oppose.

This is nowhere more evident than in our language, which, in any

society, is a good indicator of how it thinks and what it values.

We have “magic bullets.” We wage war -- on cancer, crime, drugs,

Iraq and each other. Most of us do not understand what it means to

accept and go with the flow. But that is the paradox of how we

change.

There is a school of thought in the therapeutic community called

“Solution Focused” treatment. It focuses on the positive, with a view

toward creating more of that in our lives.

One of its central tools is to ask the “Miracle Question”: Assume

you go to sleep tonight and a miracle occurs while you’re sleeping.

Whatever problems or negative feelings you’ve had that have stood

in the way of actualizing what you want in your life have totally

disappeared by morning.

How would you be different? How would your spouse/partner,

children, friends, boss know from watching you that a miracle had

occurred? And how much of that is already happening in your life?

Become more of who you already are. The miracle is already here.

It’s right in front of you. Waiting to be discovered. Just look with

beginners’ eyes rather than expert eyes. The eyes of a beginner see

many possibilities. Expert eyes see few.

As T.S. Eliot so eloquently puts it in “Four Quartets”:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

I wish each and every one of you a glorious 2005, a year in which

you do, get and be your heart’s desire.

Happy New Year.

* MAXINE COHEN is a Corona del Mar resident and marriage and

family therapist practicing in Newport Beach. She can be reached at

maxinecohen@adelphia.net or at (949) 644-6435.