New Year’s resolutions

DON’T fall for another year of setting goals that don’t work. Instead deconstruct common myths that keep you stuck and replace them with insights and strategies for living with meaning every single day.

At the beginning of a new year, people experience a sudden surge of motivation to change behaviours and pursue goals.

A fresh calendar feels like a clean slate and a chance to build a new identity.

But so frequently these big plans fail in just a few weeks. Why?

People adopt all sorts of wrong ideas, popular myths, and even flat out lies that doom their efforts from the start. A shift doesn’t happen because they weren’t serious to begin with. They just wanted a guilt-free pass to binge on their vice of choice.

Some people genuinely want change but mess up completely in their approach.

For example, their plans don’t take into account fluctuating motivation so they bite off way more than they can chew — like someone who doesn’t go to the gym ever saying — “I’m going to the gym every day.”

Massive shifts like this are often too big and too fast to maintain. So of course they fall off track, beat themselves up, and then feel reluctant to attempt positive change again in the future.

Or their desire to change is coming from a place of inadequacy. This feeling of inadequacy comes from mass media, a toxic relationship, early childhood conditioning, or some combination of all three. When you boil down the underlying internal dialogues it basically sounds like: “I’ll be enough when I’m a millionaire.

“I’ll be enough when I get that job.

“I’ll be enough when he/ she likes me.”

People pursue external things out of inadequacy and expect them to fill an internal void. If they succeed, they won’t feel fulfilled and end just putting another thing in their crosshairs to chase. It’s an endless loop.

But most people don’t succeed because they are holding themselves hostage.

They start to resent the part of themselves that judges and criticises them.

Eventually they rebel against their own pursuit for change and revert to old behaviours.

What’s important to recognise is that New Year resolutions might not work but that doesn’t mean the desire to experience transformation is wrong or misplaced.

You can still use the

New Year as a jumping-off point for a new beginning.

You need to “follow your bliss”. This does not mean “just do what feels good”.

That can lead you to some bad places (there are plenty of drugs that feels amazing that will wreck your body and your life). Joseph Campbell said: “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls”.

In a world trying to give us the step-by-step to becoming what you want, there is no cookie cutter formula to follow your bliss.

It’s a matter of uncovering and walking your unique path.

In doing so you shatter boredom and open your life up to a pervasive sense of adventure while you experience golden moments of meaning.

This goes far beyond the cliché of “finding your passion”.

It’s a way of seeing and participating in life that breaks you free from the confines of what society expects from you so you can uncover your greatest gifts and use them in service of your community — by following just three steps:

See possibility craft a potent vision of the future that fills you with excitement and inspiration. This is not a goal setting exercise but a mind-stretching trip into your imagination.

Break free — begin unhooking yourself from socially reinforced delusions. Scrap the script that’s been written for you and become the author of your own story.

Find clarity — transform confusion and information overload into crystal clear thought and action. Move away from needing all of the answers to feeling confident in navigating the questions.

And the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. ARVIND MANI

Nadi