Change is inevitable. It is the essence of life.
Change is frightening. It is beyond control.
Resolutions serve as a means to control change. At least that’s the hope.
Goals give meaning to resolutions. Who’s meaning? What meaning?
Creating a habit paves the way towards the goal. It tries to escape an existing habit.
It’s worth taking a look at little details when making a resolution.
If there is a hope linked to a resolution, maybe it’s one to get rid of a fear we associate with this change. There may be two views triggering a change, something we want to obtain and something we want to avoid. Often they are linked to one another. If there is a little discomfort coming along with the resolution, check in to see if your inner voice will use it against you when problems come your way.
Integrating goals into the resolution helps to become more specific about it. Is it specific enough that it creates meaning, one you can adhere to? How does the goal integrate into your journey? Goals can come along with forceful invitations from friends or successes we’ve seen along the way and admire. There is nothing wrong about it. The question then becomes if you’ve made it your own goal. This inner voice, which sometimes is an inner theatre and thus a space to discuss with ourselves, is an old friend. Sometimes its voice is faint and we hardly sense it. We know it’s there, but it’s so faint that we don’t acknowledge it. It’s the voice that comes back onto the scene when things don’t work out as planned.
If we go for a resolution, then there is a change involved. If this change requires to create a new habit, then it will disrupt an existing habit. It’s an invitation to a second guest in our inner theatre. The two habits will have different goals, sometimes competing goals. This inner theatre becomes an arena where two voices try to convince each other or fight each other. They will do it as long as they can’t see how both goals can live alongside or contribute to a larger goal.
I’ve called it inner voice, inner theatre, discomfort. Steven Pressfield calls it resistance. There is a multitude of ways to describe it. What they all have in common is, that somewhere, somehow they create a signal.
It’s small, a detail, easy to be missed.
It’s a chance to engage with it, to acknowledge it and be aware of it.
That’s how we transform it and make it an asset towards reaching our goal and making this resolution happen.
