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By Victoria Leo January 02. 2015 5:08PM The three keys to effective new year’s resolutions When you hear the phrase “New Year’s Resolution,” do you feel energized or depressed? Do you generally abandon your resolutions by March? The three main objections to creating commitments to change for the new year are: 1) It’s so artificial; 2) My life is perfect. I don’t need to change anything; and 3) They don’t last. It’s an exercise in futility. Let’s explore these in turn. First: it’s artificial. Well, yes of course it is. Homo sapiens is the meaning-creating animal. Most of what we do is artificial in the sense that we create meaning around essentially meaningless events. Do you remember how you felt when the millennium turned? I spent the night before meditating and hiked in the redwood forest all day on the first, sending Reiki energy to all the people of the world as the day dawned for their time zone. I wept at the enormity of a thousand-year calendar turning the page and the glory of being present at such a momentous time. But to the birds and the bees it was just a rainy winter day, like every rainy winter day then or since. How did you feel on your wedding day? How did it feel to hold your newborn in your arms for the first time? Why did you save their christening clothes? I mean, who cares? You care. We care because days and events have meaning to us, meaning-creating creatures that we are. The first day of a new year has a meaning to us emotionally. We feel full of an energy that can overcome inertia; why not harness it for your purposes? Second: your life is perfect. The person is really saying that they are exhausted from previous rounds of change and need to rest for a while, or don’t want to do the work of change. Meditate deeply and ask Spirit for guidance. Don’t intellectualize. Third: They don’t work. Resolutions (or commitments) that lead to powerful results, in January or any other time, contain three key characteristics: • They are specific, measurable changes — and not too many of them. Most of us have sat through seminars in SMART goals at work. Vague things like “I won’t yell at my kids so much” don’t work because you have no way to measure if you are making progress. Don’t try to change every aspect of your life at once. Have no more than two goals, and achieve them before you move on to any others. • They start SMALL and they increase very, very slowly. People who want to get into better shape fail when they set the initial bar too high and/or raise the bar too quickly. Yes, I understand impatience and I know that you HAVE to lose those 35 pounds. Trying to lose them in a month is an ironclad guarantee of failure. Your initial goal must be trivially-easy to achieve. The boost you feel from “winning” has enormous power. Start by walking for five minutes a day. After several weeks, increase to 10 minutes. You have to get your body used to the discipline of every day for a small amount, before you can move to “and also three times a week for an hour.” This rule is especially true for goals that are emotionally scary personal changes. Start with small goals like researching a question. The next week, first-draft an email. The easier it is to accomplish, the less likely that the fear response will activate and incapacitate your forward momentum.  •  They reward all progress. Reward yourself by closing your eyes and imagining you’re on the beach on Maui for 30 minutes or give yourself permission for a bubble bath or 10 minutes uninterrupted with a good book when you reach your goal of a week of walking for five minutes a day, no exceptions. Don’t reward results (like weight loss), which may be delayed due to forces beyond your control. Reward all actions that are effective steps toward the goal. This is the unglamorous, but effective, way to create meaningful, spiritual improvements in 2015. — Victoria Leo wants you to "Blast Through Barriers" to a better life. Visit her website at www.soaringdragon.biz or call her at 253-203-6676. Share your Inner Peace The Ashland Daily Tidings invites residents of the Rogue Valley to submit articles on all aspects of inner peace, including intuition, inner guidance, mind training, courage, fearlessness, forgiveness of self or others, honesty, gentleness, humor, open mindedness, friendship, tolerance, trust, faith, kindness, gratitude, overcoming and/or accepting life’s challenges of addictions, loss, grief, pain, awareness of presence and more. Send 600- to 700-word articles to Sally McKirgan, [email protected]. http://www.dailytidings.com/article/20150102/NEWS/150109964 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->