Anti Resolution!

I used to make resolutions at the beginning of the year ‘more exercise!’ ‘have fun!’ and would fail within a few weeks and then feel terrible about myself for not keeping my resolution. So I stopped making them all together.  The problem with conventional resolutions is that they come from a place which is setting up the assumption at there is something wrong with you which needs to be changed.  Thinking about it that way you can see that it would immediately set up a desire to resist this change with every arsenal available to ones unconscious.

Then two years ago I came across Christine Kane’s Word of the Year concept. Instead of the conventional resolution she suggests that you choose a word theme for the year. When I came across the idea I thought it sounded a little… woolly… aren’t goals meant to be SMART? How could a word change things? But I decided to plunge in and chose Self Care in 2008 for my word. Which lead to a roller coaster of revelations of a much deeper nature than – ‘floss your teeth more often’. I wrote about my experiences here  http://christinekane.com/blog/word-of-the-year-self-care/.  Last year I knew that whatever word I chose would have a profound effect and was led to choose Love. And I was right. Under its influence I ditched a contract which was well paying but not serving me or my creativity, recommitted to my creative work and started a documentary project and have done eight months of coaching to get my life back into the one I used to LOVE.

Christine’s take on the word of the year is this -

 “The reason most resolutions don’t work is that they address only one level of your life. The DO level. It’s the DO-HAVE-BE model. “I will DO this thing.” (i.e., Lose weight) “So I can HAVE this other thing” (Self-Esteem) and I can BE this thing. (Confident.)

The average New Year’s Resolution doesn’t address the core of the issue – the “BE” level.

The best order for creating positive changes in your life is the BE-DO-HAVE model. This means you start from the BE level. When you begin changing on the BE level of your life, then the DO level and the HAVE level follow more easily.

When you start only on the DO level, then all the blocks on the BE level will often become the obstacles you can’t overcome.”

So start with the outcome. What is it you want to feel in your life? I wanted to love my life so the changes followed organically from there. Start from the core and then work your way up to the DO level.  I also want to add there was in my last year of doing this no planning involved no heavy checklists, diary dates it all evolved very organically and naturally in an unforced way instead of the grim ‘I must do this’.

This year I’m planning on having an AUDACIOUS YEAR!

 ~~~

reposted from a while back - this year I'm toying with 'create'.