Focus on life’s worthy pursuits
DON’T beat yourself up with resolutions you won’t keep. Make this new year great with a few focus points.
For many of us, the dawn of a new year sets off a false alarm we try to smother with an arbitrary list of resolutions. Year after year, relentlessly, we whack ourselves with them.
Quit that job you hate, drink less, exercise more – these restrictive orders pave the way for what we believe will be our best year yet.
Despite evidence showing less than 10 per cent of people actually stick to their resolutions, we continue to force them on ourselves.
So how about we ditch the resolutions and instead follow a few focus points to a better 2018. First of all, be “present”. We spend copious amounts of time racing ahead of each other in life.
If no one else is around to race us, we call our own bluff – what’s tomorrow, what comes after that?
Did I make that appointment? Damn. My dry cleaning.
It’s as if we think there is a special prize for the person who makes it to life’s finish line first. Well, there’s not.
We should all try to live in such a way that our senses have the capacity to lend weight to our memories.
The present is what life is all about – it is the differentiator between a life lived well and a life rushed along. Just be here, now.
Practise this skill and feel its benefits in 2018 and the years beyond. Secondly, practise compassion. We human beings are gifted with the innate ability to experience the deepest levels of compassion.
Yet, as life gets hard and pressures increase, we become rigid and banish compassion as being too burdensome.
Survival of the fittest becomes our mantra and by doing so we lose touch with the most important part of our moral compass – compassion.
Compassion is a fundamental part of our mortality and denying it in order to preserve our own feelings leads to narcissistic behaviour along with loneliness.
True compassion involves cherish- ing others, not wishing better for them, but feeling their pain with them and not running away.
This simple act of putting yourself in the position of another’s hardship and feeling their despair enough to understand it is a gift. Try to expand your level of empathy and understanding of others in 2018.
The third focus point is tougher: Be more vulnerable.
We resist vulnerability because we fear it – we are mistaken in thinking vulnerability is a form of weakness or a sign of submission, it’s not.
To be vulnerable is to be so at peace with yourself that you’re brave enough to expose the parts of yourself you’d rather keep hidden to another.
It’s our connector in love – you cannot feel love without being vulnerable. One must be courageous enough to embrace vulnerability in order to connect with others on the deepest of levels even when it feels uncomfortable. Next, be authentic. The greatest frauds in life manoeuvre through their existence with a mask on – the people pleasers.
They stir in bed at night quivering at the thought of disappointing the very people who mean little to them.
They are “yes people” – they constantly change things about themselves to satisfy the requirements of others and in the process, forget who they are.
You only get one life and you must live it being the most raw and uncomfortable version of yourself.
Forget the people around you and what you think they want you to be. Finally, defy fear. Studies suggest we are the most anxious population to have ever lived. We are stressed out of our brains.
What if I don’t get that job? What if he doesn’t like me? What if I mess this up? Feeding your fear with more fear will only ensure it reproduces and suffocates you until you’ve lost yourself in 2018. Don’t fear fear, feel it. Embrace the discomfort of disproportionate surges of adrenaline and sit in its rush without fleeing. Walk up to fear with your legs shaking and give it the middle finger. Fear needn’t stop you from the life you deserve. Feel your fear and do it anyway. I wish each of you a fresh and prosperous 2018 free of New Year’s resolutions. Go and be who you are and do it properly. You don’t need to put that on a to-do list.
TRUE COMPASSION INVOLVES CHERISHING OTHERS, NOT WISHING BETTER FOR THEM, BUT FEELING THEIR PAIN WITH THEM AND NOT RUNNING AWAY