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.
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