MIND MOVES:If you are serious about changing an aspect of your life, start by identifying something deep inside your soul that you want to nurture, writes TONY BATES
WITH THE FRENZY of the holidays behind us, we look to a brand new year and wonder what it holds in store.
“What is it you plan to do,” the poet Mary Oliver asks, “with your one wild and precious life”?
Bloated by the excesses of Christmas, we have sworn an oath to curb our sensual appetites. We want to take back our lives, to become the authors of our own existence and not merely passive onlookers. We know that inside this sluggish body there is a better “me”; we know that deep within my being there is something I want to say with my life, that right now is muted. But already promises have been made and broken.
I get this new year resolution thing, I really do. All of us need to rein in our mediocrity from time to time and not allow it to take over. A new year offers the possibility of starting over, no matter how badly we have allowed things to slide. And there is something noble in each of us that doesn’t want to throw in the towel, something that Brendan Kennelly describes as the part of us that yearns to start over:
“Though we live in a world
that dreams of ending
that always seems about to
give in
something that will not
acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin”
But in spite of our best intentions, we stumble and fall short of the ideals to which we aspire. This generally happens because we make the wrong resolutions. We choose to change behaviours that are a fundamental part of how we cope with our lives. We might not like them but, ideal or not, these behaviours may be part of how we “keep it together”. When we fail to appreciate this, our survival instinct sabotages our superego.
Rather than think about ditching something that you don’t like about yourself, why not think about bringing alive something in your personality that wants to express itself? Perhaps there is some dream you have had for your life that you have never had the confidence to believe could become a reality.
Change becomes possible when it draws upon your most personal desires and values. Your heart and your head will need to work together if you are to overcome your natural tendency to preserve the status quo.
So if you are serious about change, start by identifying something deep inside your soul that you want to nurture in 2010. Think about what would be different about your life, if this aspect of your being was encouraged to come alive. Maybe you would have more energy, or be more confident, or more daring.
With a clear image of the goal you want to make a reality in your life, think about some small changes you could make in your lifestyle that would help to make this happen. You may need to change how you relate to your body so that you become more caring towards it; or change the way you listen to others, so that you can nurture and deepen your relationships. Perhaps the most important change you need to make concerns how you cope with work, or lack of it, in your life.
If you are smart, you will set your face to making a series of small changes that will each contribute to the goal you want to achieve. It may be that going to bed an hour earlier will be critical to having the energy to rise earlier and write, or jog, or whatever, in the early morning. These modest changes to your daily routine may go unnoticed by others. But when you get them synchronised, their cumulative impact will restore in you the feeling that you are the author of your own life.
New beginnings are best implemented with tons of patience and encouragement. You need to be realistic about the time it takes to establish a new routine. They say it takes 21 days to break a habit that has become woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. They also say it takes nine months to make any new behaviour a natural part of our lifestyle.
Failure and setbacks are part of the change process; they should make you pause and consider what might work better for you, given the practical circumstances of your life; or what additional adjustments or supports may be needed to make your dream a reality.
Don’t use failure as a stick to beat yourself with. When you commit to change, you commit to a learning process that will take you into new and unfamiliar territory, before it carries you over the line to a new place where you feel more deeply at home with yourself.
Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie)