Newsletter - January 4, 2017

New Year Resolution Ideas?

I have to admit, I am not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, even though I’ve heard a lot of great new year resolution ideas. Here’s why: unless you tie your resolution to deeper motivations that really drive your life, there will likely not be much lasting change.

Sure, anyone can make a change for a few days or weeks, maybe even a few months, but to have lasting change over many years, you need to tap into deeper currents, not just a list of top 10 new year resolution ideas.

Deeper currents are something that you feel. Like a yearning that has been there a long time or a fundamental question about your life that you have not answered. It’s hard to put your finger on those deep currents, because they seem nebulous and usually go unexpressed.

Maybe one way to understand them is to look at recurring feelings, recurring questions, recurring patterns in your life. For example, again and again you may feel unsatisfied in some very fundamental way that you cannot even explain, or maybe you often feel like you are always running, never able to relax and enjoy.

When you tap into those deeper currents that seem to drive your life, recognize them and allow yourself to feel them, it is both thrilling and scary, because you might really change your life! And while that offers the possibility of more lasting happiness, it takes you out of your comfort zone.

It is that kind of power for change that resides within everyone--and it is that which we touch in meditation, bit by bit, in a very gentle way.

Meditation is just a word to describe the fundamental human experience to finally stop, to relax so deeply that you touch your very being, becoming ever more familiar with a totally simple, ordinary, wonderfulness that is always available, whatever you are doing.

So even if you have lots of new year resolution ideas and can’t wait to get started, I’d like to suggest that you check in with those deeper currents and pick those one or two ideas that really align with what is most important to you.


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