I’ve ditched resolutions. Full ditch. No remorse. Resolutionless. It isn’t that I don’t like the idea of goals, I just feel like convincing myself to do something – now – that I’ve had a whole year to do is sort of silly reasoning. (Lose weight. Ehhh. Start working out. Meh. Quit drinking. Definitely not.) I could have done any of those things at any point in the last year, or let’s be honest, at any point in the last 15 years but every year I choose not too. And apparently I’m not totally alone. According to Statistic Brain, only 45% of Americans are still making resolutions and only 8% are actually successful at achieving them. So what does that mean? Well, for starters, maybe that means we need something different. A new kind of resolution.
Resolutions come from something deeper that we want. We say “lose weight” or “work out more” but we really want to live a healthier life. The problem with resolutions actually isn’t that we reach too far, but that we don’t reach far enough, broad enough, high enough. Now you: Start thinking bigger.
For the last two years, I’ve dropped the conventional resolutions and adopted a larger scaled intention. In 2013, when I began this, my intention, unknowingly, became Excelsior or, in laymen’s terms, finding the silver lining. Did I become the next Mother Teresa and find the good in everything? No. But I found more silver linings that year than any other. Last year, my intention was born of American Authors: No Limits, Just Epiphanies. It was a strange one, I agree, but as I read back on 2014’s intention today it was clear that I had had a year of No Limits and Illuminating Discovery. I fully came to terms with this thought: that no other career or job has ever made me as happy, as liberated, and as passionate about life as this one had – money or no money. I began writing for Wanderlust and Lipstick and Women Who Live on Rocks. I took the plunge and made my non-paying job as a writer my full-time gig – no looking back. When people asked what I did, I’d no longer have the luxury of falling back on stay-at-home mom/writer-in-dreaming. I’d have to say I was a writer – a penniless one. A happy, penniless one. And then, just three days before 2014 was complete, I’d publish my first piece that paid. I threw more parties, I laughed harder, I bonded more deeply, I exposed myself more than I had in many years. Limits? What limits? Thank you, 2014.
This year, as I did last year, it took me a little while to land on the perfect intention. I toiled around with the idea of being more positive but I needed a bit more beef. More substance. And then it came to me in the form it often does. Oprah. Now you: Don’t rush. Let what you want for this year seep in and fester a bit. Don’t make any rash decisions. Do you want to be kinder? Show more gratitude? Do you want more adventure? More travel? What part of your life would you like to nurture more? Think before deciding.
In an interview with Diane Von Furstenberg, Oprah talks to DVF about her wrap dress, the dress that made fashionista Diane Von Furstenberg a success and this is what DVF had to say, ” You never really feel the success; you always feel the things that are going wrong. So many mornings I wake up and I feel like a loser, and I ask other people who are successful, ‘Do you ever feel like a loser?’ and they say yeah.” I thought How sad. How sad to not know when you are standing right in the middle of your success. To not know that you are doing it. And then I realized that I do the same thing. When my work gets published, I asterisk it like Roger Maris: It’s published but it’s not paid so…. When a post was published that I believed was a paid spot, I didn’t tell Husband it was a paid post until it went through… just in case. When I discovered that it was, in fact, a paid post, I beat myself up because it was only one paid post and not a swarm of them. Real writers get published, get paid, write books, etc., etc., etc. I was surrounded by my own successes and I wasn’t seeing it. How sad indeed.
Boom! Aha! Whoa! It was one of those moments. I was so busy thinking about all of my failures when the only thing I was failing at was failing to see all of my successes. My life is the epitome of success – my version of it – and it’s time I started taking notice. Acknowledge success and welcome it.
Now you: Intentions are more than just wants or goals. It should be something that envelops your whole life and not just one part of it. For me, it isn’t just to be more successful. No, no. It is about taking notice of my successes – wherever they come. Finding adventure doesn’t just have to mean cliff diving when you look at your whole life as an adventure. What’s the big picture?