Are you recycling your resolutions?

It’s time to get in touch with your real needs!

Resolutions are a great way to set our intentions for a fresh, new year. Often a featured topic around the table for a New Year’s Eve celebration, setting New Year’s resolutions or reflections has to be one of the most widely accepted and commonly practiced mindfulness exercises for the wider western society. For many, New Year’s resolutions are a chance to reset our approach or goals and to begin another year with a mindset of productivity and success. Whether your focus is on your career, or more personal themes - setting resolutions are a way to set our sights on what we want from life.

But how effective are these annual resolutions, really? How many of us recycle the same resolutions, whether achievable or unachievable, just to continue on with the same behaviour and attitude? How many of us set resolutions for ourselves, or for the purpose of achieving someone else’s vision of success?

My mind returns to tender, formative years. New Year’s resolutions, a romanticized notion of a fresh slate, the promise of a new and different year, and opportunity stretching ahead as I set my sights on goals.

“Get a boyfriend this year”
“Lose weight”
“Get better grades at school”

And as I got older, these resolutions stayed with me, growing with me.

“Get engaged to my boyfriend”
“Lose weight”
“Get a better job”

These resolutions were not helpful, not really. These resolutions were not my own! Each of these examples boiling down to external pressures, measures of success that were set by society and culture. Each one, a goal that will never really satisfy a hungry individual seeking validation. It’s almost cringe-worthy when I reflect on my past resolutions, an echo of the person that I used to be and what I used to think would enhance my life. Cringe-worthy, only if I view myself without the compassion or empathy deserved for someone who hasn’t really stopped to get in touch with their real needs.

Needless to say, the same resolutions were repeated for many years, without much thought or reflection about what these kinds of goals were doing to my mental health. Undermining personal wins and the natural development of a person simply living their life, in their own perfect timing.

At some point or another we have all set ourselves unrealistic goals, or goals that don’t reflect who we are.

The irony, of course, is that all of these resolutions were to be recycled without actual reflection. Even when a resolution was reached, the hunger remained, as well as the inability to truly recognise the real needs that lay underneath these surface desires.

I use my own early and naive personal resolutions as an example, because I’m certain that at some point or another we have all set ourselves unrealistic goals, or goals that don’t reflect who we are. I’m certain that regardless of the specific resolution, many of us become trapped in the pursuit of “success” or “acceptance”, and the myth of a fresh start each calendar year. When I truly started to do the necessary work on myself, and started to understand my own needs a bit better, these repeated and recycled resolutions dropped away and lost all their power! My worth was no longer pinned on someone accepting or choosing me, or what strangers thought of my body shape, or what I did for a living and how I made my way in this world.

A tool that was fundamental around this time was the flower essence blend “Self Heal”. At this time I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to heal or where I was going in life, but I knew on some level that parts of my life needed attention and that on a deeper level I wasn’t feeling fulfilled or happy. Even when I was finding success in my resolutions, they weren’t providing the satisfaction that I had expected. Self Heal allowed me to turn my attention inwards, to the core of my needs and to dismantle some of those beliefs that had kept me in pursuit of external validation. It may sound like an oversimplification, but when the lightbulb finally turned on for me, I understood that these repeated resolutions were all in the pursuit of happiness, and that happiness was within my grasp if I could start to prioritize it and recognise it in its truest sense.

Perspective is everything, and without gratitude and joy the grass will ALWAYS be greener on the other side.

Perhaps reading this could prompt you to sit and to truly ‘be’ with yourself and your resolutions.

What would that promotion mean to you, if you were to get it?
Will you really start loving your body if you were to lose that 10kg?
If you find that ‘perfect’ partner, will you really be content?

I can only speak for myself… But it is my sense that when I listened to my needs, through the vehicle of my resolutions, it became all too clear that my self-love was conditional. My worth was tied to ideas of success that wouldn’t really change who I was at my core.

Your job, your body, your status, none of these things can replace the deep and unyielding power of loving yourself and starting to listen to your inner voice. The truth is, we all deserve to love ourselves regardless of how others may define or perceive us. And the deeper truth is that as we start to accept ourselves more deeply, with more love, we are able to understand those “outside” motivations better.

Resolutions to lose weight might make way for a goal to feel at home in our own skin.

Designs on locating and locking the ‘perfect’ partner might shift and make space for questions such as ‘what amazing traits could I offer a loving relationship?’.

And in a much grander sense, resolutions about our career may make way for questions about where we want to be in life, and our direction for the future.

For 2023 it is my wish for you, dear reader, that you use this transformative time to reflect on your real, innermost soul needs and desires. Use this time and space to go deeper with your ‘goals’, and uncover the parts of yourself that deserve your unconditional love and devotion, your nurturance. Enhance the process of going deeper and understanding yourself more with essences such as Seeing Eye (for fresh perspective and inner vision) or Soul Path (to stay centred on the best expression of yourself based truly on your needs). It’s time to stop recycling those old resolutions and to let go of those beliefs that keep us away from our truest selves.

Wishing you clarity and unconditional self-love for 2023,

Grace

Get in touch with your real needs