Dear Spiritual Companions,

In a few days it is National Forget Your New Year Resolutions Day.  I am so glad I can end that nonsense.  Only kidding because I haven’t done resolutions for years.  I found the experience self defeating.  I would begin the year with a bang doing my new resolution and then with the passing of each day it became harder and harder to do and gave up.  I finally quit and felt like a failure.  After doing this for a number of years I decided to stop my resolution making because it wasn’t working.  I felt a little bad when people asked me how my resolutions were going, but of course that faded over time too.  Someone else must have thought this way too because January 17 is the day we are encouraged to give up the facade of thinking we can keep our resolutions.  Over my lifetime I have reflected quite a bit on whether change does happen and if so how.  When I was doing counseling with individuals or couples I finally stopped because it didn’t seem to be working.  Being a Spiritual Director has shown me that change is possible, but only if we turn our lives over to a Higher Power and work with It to encounter what this life has to offer.

I have discovered that life is basically a habit.  How we live our lives is built upon the various habits we have chosen over the years.  Here is an example – how we respond to other’s negative behavior towards and with us.  I read this recently, “S.T.E.P. – Stop taking everything personally.”  It simply is a mental or emotional habit to take everything that happens to us personally.  The reason it is so difficult to stop this behavior is because we have been doing it for years.  Someone taught us to do this a long time ago and we accepted their advise and so we have been doing it ever since.  The only way to end such reactions to others is to become aware of what we are doing.  In other words it is learning how to become conscious of the habits we are using.  Like our breathing we only become aware of our habits when we stop and pay attention to them.  The next time someone does or doesn’t do something to us stop and pay attention to the thought and emotional process within you.  Stay in the moment and feel what you are feeling.  Next watch where that feeling might be in your body.  Now you have an opportunity to ask yourself whether you need to continue that feeling.  It may take a long time to do your feeling work, because of the pain or hurt you might have, but after awhile you can ask yourself if you want anther’s actions to affect you in such a strong way.  If you don’t then you have an opportunity to let that feeling go and even change your relationship from your perspective.  You can use the same process with where you carry your feelings in your body.  Once you encounter where it is, you can breath God’s Healing Light around the affected area which will help you to let go of your bodily feelings.  Like your emotional feelings this might take a long time because of the build up over the years.

One of the reasons I believe resolutions aren’t successful is because of the hard work alluded to in the previous paragraph.  no wonder it sometimes takes so long to change.  I don’t mean to be pessimistic about this process, but there are areas in my life I have been working on for most of my life and I am not finished.  In our world we are taught that we are supposed to complete a task and then we can move onto the next one.  From a spiritual perspective the next step might be letting go a little more fully of harmful behaviors, but not completely.  In fact, I believe we are not intended to be totally free of certain habits.   They are our lifetime teachers and so we need them to help us grow.  The completion only comes with the end of this physical existence.  When we  return to the spiritual realm we are then able to reflect on the learnings from this physical lifetime.  We thus become more open to who we are in God and ready to move on into whatever is next.  Life is a school and when we graduate, instead of a diploma, we receive a much greater gift – Awareness.  Instead of attaining something we are free to let go of something.  Instead of calling attention to ourselves we call attention to the Higher Power working through us.  Instead of listening to our ego we listen to the still small voice within.  Instead of making resolutions we resolve to do just the opposite where we don’t have to live out our expectations for change.

The bottom line for me is found in showing up every day.  By doing that we become aware of what a gift a day is.  No wonder God said to Job, “Did you ever command a day to dawn?”  The point of that line is not to reveal an angry or frustrated God, but rather a God encouraging us to appreciate every day, every hour, every moment we are alive.  The end of the story for Job is his life being restored and in abundance.  Job had struggled with not taking everything personally, including his part in life, and discovering sometimes life is a challenge.  Now he was ready to hear God’s Words and to appreciate what he had supposedly thought was good or bad!  When we accept life on its terms – it is what it is, then we can let it be and learn from it.  Nothing that happens in this life is meant to hurt us in any long term way.  It doesn’t mean it might not hurt for a bit, but not forever.  By showing up everyday, no matter what happens, we will be much more open to the Mystery of God’s Unconditional Love for us and everyone else.

I am really glad I can let go of any of my resolutions so I can be free to meet life as it is.  How about you?  We don’t even have to wait until January 17, we can do it now.