Method or Madness
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
It’s that time of year when people’s fancy turns to self-improvement. Everyone’s doing it! We’ve indulged, we’ve rested, and enthusiasm for a fresh start is rising! There’s nothing at all wrong with this—in fact it can make life fun to take part in seasonal and societal shifts as they happen—and joining with others can help to reinforce your own commitment to positive change. If you want to jump on this bandwagon, here are just a few thoughts to help you add checks and balances to your process (not just for politics, people!) so that your decisions really suit your needs and purposes:
· It seems that, in January, physical fitness goals dominate the day. While improving your physical health and fitness is always a worthy goal, and one that supports pretty much everything else you probably want to do and experience, adding an aggressive exercise regimen is not the best place to start for everyone. You may be tempted to think that you have to go whole hog or nothing, but this kind of thinking gets a lot of people injured before the month is out. That will throw a monkey wrench into your momentum for sure. Try to keep any schemes for physical exercise moderate for your current level of fitness so that you’re not adding unsustainable stress to your body, and so that you don’t get stopped short before you can begin to solidify healthy new habits. This is one of those areas in which you will never be finished. There’s no such thing as “done.“ So don’t freak out and overdo, but do plan activities that will qualify as your next phase of achievement.
· For that matter, try to keep any resolution for change to a moderate scheme. We’re often taught that in order to get anything worthwhile done, we need to decide what to accomplish and how, and then thoroughly ignore thoughts, feelings, and life circumstances that might make adhering to the plan difficult. This is the best thinking of two thousand years of male-energy-dominant thinking, and while it has its merits, it also exposes us to unnecessary likelihoods of stress, burnout, unhappiness that results from an unbalanced approach to life, and shame if we fail in a pursuit that was woefully unrealistic to begin with. I’m not saying that no one should take on big goals, but we need to make sure we’re thinking about fitting new items into the context of a whole life with multiple demands. We need to think about building in flexibility, and appropriate moments for reconsideration when circumstances change, so that we can stay in the game for the long haul as life throws distractions our way.
· Just because someone you know or read about is taking on something that sounds interesting or inspiring, that doesn’t mean you need to take on the same. Focus. Really think about what you feel called to learn and grow into this year. There is such a thing as right timing. Events and repetitive pain points in your life may be pointing to certain areas in which it would really behoove you to acquire new skills. Spend a few minutes noting whether there has been a recurring situation in your life lately that you could handle better if you just noticed and addressed your part in it. This might be a more appropriate focus for your energies than climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or what have you.
· No one is in a better position than you to decide what’s the right next step for your goals and your life. Of course, it can be helpful to talk through decisions like this with someone supportive, but make sure you don’t turn to someone who has strong agendas of their own for you who might limit your sense of possibility. It’s fine to give important people in your life input on the choice and timing of your projects, but it helps to start with your own opinions about what would be ideal for you before beginning any negotiations of this kind. A great deal of your own power flows from following your heart about who you want to be and what you want to strive for in this life. Don’t abdicate your opportunity to get clear on your own desires and intuition about you.
I hope this helps you to make good decisions for the year ahead. Whatever you do or don’t decide to pursue in 2017, I wish you a happy, healthy year filled with blessings and challenges worthy of you.