Unfolding Insight 4: New Year's Resolutions and What We Really Want
Greetings, fellow Unfolder!
A few procedural notes before we dig in:
Stock imagery sucks. Searching for it and trying to make it fit an email sucks even more. From here on out, the photos will be from my archives. I hope you like them!
If you’re looking for the next instalment on the Voice in The Head, fret not! It’s coming! But for reasons of grief and illness and general *gestures broadly at life* it’s not yet fully baked. Don’t worry, you’ll be befriending your inner critic in no time, I promise!
Right! On with the show!
As we roll rapidly — oh so fucking rapidly — into February MARCH (!), I'm reflecting on new year’s resolutions and the fact that this year, for the first time in a long time, I didn't make a single one.
Now, to be clear, I was not some lightweight resolution-maker. Every year for the past decade or more, I've sat down and dutifully reviewed the year past, brushed over the accomplishments, zeroed in on the supposed failures, and used those as the basis for a deeply considered laundry list of issues to address in the year ahead.
These earnest wishes for a better me were written up — usually with a fountain pen and Egyptian blue or turquoise ink in a beautiful Leuchtturm journal, because the tools matter, don't they? — and then... within the space of a month or two, largely forgotten.
That I didn't achieve my aims had nothing to do with a lack of willpower, even if we accept that willpower is a finite resource and one easily overcome in moments of stress.
No, my failure to live the year of my supposed dreams had to do with a failing far more profound: my new year’s resolutions weren't actually mine.
Listen to folk talk about the changes that they want to make in their life and, very often, the conversation is littered with the word should.
I should loose some weight.
I should read more books.
I should phone my friends more often.
It's a tricky little word should — it suggests that there's some kind of expectation that we should show up in the world in a particular way. It also implies that we're somehow failing in that task.
More often than not, these shoulds and their attendant expectations aren't even ours. They're informed by others — our parents, our peers, the media, or a set of voices in the head that replicate all of these and more — and their unquestioned assumptions about how our world should be.
These shoulds, therefore, are often an accusatory, moralising insistence that have no fucking business telling us what to do. Yet they weasel their way in to our heads, live there rent-free and make us for the most part feel pretty shitty about ourselves in our failure to meaningfully progress against their fucking goals.
Is it any wonder then that find ways to rebel against them, usually simply by giving up? Is it any wonder then, really, that our new year’s resolutions so often go unfulfilled?
What therefore might be the solution? How might we set an aspiration or two that we have a hope in hell of achieving?
Well let me ask you this: what do you really want?
And you might ask me, reasonably: well how would I really know?
Here's a clue: you can feel it in your body.
Shoulds on one hand and somatically speaking come with a sense of constriction.
Let's run an exercise so you can feel what I mean. Here are a few examples that might make for good starting points:
I should see my mum more.
I should go to the gym today.
I should drink less wine.
Take an example that works for you, close your eyes, and imagine shoulding your way to action.
Now feel for the constriction in your body.
If you're like me, you'll feel a tightness across your forehead, like you're having to think your way in to doing something.
Others feel it as a constriction in their chest, a closing down at the thought of the effort of doing something that doesn’t really set their heart alight.
And others still might feel it as a heaviness in their gut, the somatic equivalent of a weary "Oh god... really? Again?"
Wants, on the other hand, start as a feeling in the belly, one that's expansive and, you'll sense, laden with potential. Our guts aren't super-strong linguists mind, so we might have to take some time to put words to what that feeling is.
So take a moment now to relax your belly, take a few deep breaths down in to your abdomen, and feel in to your gut. Think for a moment about what you want, what you really, really want, and wait a moment.
If you're not used to listening to your gut, the signals might be weak to start with; sit with them and let them unfold. Let them arise and solidify. I can guarantee that, with time, you’ll find signals of a want or two bubbling away in there.
Now, with a tender regard, start to put some words to those signals. How do they make you feel? What do they conjure in your mind's eye? What words fall easily to describe the sensations in your gut and what they point to?
When I feel in to my gut just now, here's what I want:
I want to feel good in my body.
I want to nourish myself creatively and intellectually.
I want to feel a greater sense of connection to my families.
The beauty of these wants is that unlike the shoulds they leave open the possibility of how I might fulfil them.
If I call to mind that I want to feel good in my body, there's a myriad different ways that I might achieve that. Going to the gym is but one of them.
If on a particular day my body's really not feeling up to strenuous exercise, by reconnecting to that expansive sense of want, my body might suggest a gentle walk, a bath, or some stretching. Any of these outcomes support the want to feel good in my body.
In this way, if I keep a sense of wonder about how I might honour all of my wants, it’s impossible to fail because I missed a day at the gym, didn't get that blog post written, or forgot to call my mum again. Wants give us options that shoulds take away.
So if you're feeling the nearly-March malaise and your new years resolutions are but a distant memory, take some time to feel in to what you really want this year to be like, and what you want your life to be like, too. There’s still plenty of time.
In the meantime, if you'd like to explore your deepest wants for living a life you love, I'd love to explore that with you, too. Get in touch.
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