Healthy lifestyle practices are sure to enter our minds with the beginning of a new year. However, we can’t possibly fit in pilates, yoga, clean eating, friday date nights, marathon running, and a meditation routine all at once. So, how do we decide on which healthy resolution to choose?
Let’s make it easy. What if your New Year’s Resolution became about being with what you are already struggling to practice. Instead of embarking on new trends, diets, relationships, or expectations, why not renew your capacity to be more strongly engaged in what you are already working on. Maybe you recently started a meditation or yoga practice, but only did it once? Make 2019 the year of committing to what you’ve already started.
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype and discounts offered for a new health or fitness plan, but my guess is you’ve already tried it. So, why shell out a monetary amount that somehow represents your commitment when it will end up not taking you anywhere except for through the first two weeks of January? Therein lies the problem with making the resolutions in the first place. They aren’t lasting, which is why I’m asking you to be with what you are already doing or have been trying to do for the last 10 years. This is the real work, instead of “should-ing” all over yourself, you are actually being present with what challenges you are already facing.
These challenges you are struggling with are also likely internal. When you face what lies within, rather than looking outside for a solution, change can actually occur because that is it’s authentic basis. Otherwise, you spend a lifetime fishing for a new resolution that sometimes even takes us backwards, due to the frustration, past pain, or sorrow we create from continuously looking for an outer solution to fix our internal pain.
So, what do you think sounds like the better investment? Spend more money or work with what’s already there? Don’t get me wrong, spending money and getting on a bandwagon is fun and in a sense feels easier in the moment because of the confrontation we are avoiding.
The whole reason we create resolutions is to move forward? How can you do this if you are not doing the internal work that gets you to move forward? Without this internal changes we are focusing on the external and the external is only a temporary solution because it achieves an external consequence. External temporary solutions are usually quick to fix, but quick to last.
I challenge you this January to take your resolution to the next level and instead questioning what you need to do, follow through on what you have already put works toward. Be present with yourself and your goals, and create change that will last throughout 2019!