The New Year is here. Do you want a positive or a negative start to it? That’s your choice. I vote positive; I think you deserve it. However, society and our own personal emotional and thought programs may not feel the same way. If you’re the type to make resolutions, I can imagine the internal pressures and the external pressures you might be feeling are mounting. The mounting pressures probably make you want to use this day to fix yourself. Before you give in to those pressures, though, let’s look at this opportunity in the light of perspective.

Here is the perspective I usually see: you think, or society says, that you are broken or incomplete and need to fix yourself. So you make your New Year’s beginning the same as all the others you’ve experienced—start with a promise to change the brokenness that you don’t like. Then you fuel that change with a burst of emotional energy, self-deprecation, or even depression. You further stack the negative emotions up in a mountain that you call “inspiration” and jump off it. Only to finally fall to your self-inflicted punishment of shame and negative feelings because, once again, you failed.

The time to heap self-punishment and suffering upon yourself is upon you once the failure has happened. Start with feeling that you’re not good enough—you could not even measure up to your own goals. Add to it that you couldn’t muster the same level of “inspiration” on day seven that you had on New Year’s Day. Finally, punish yourself for giving up.

That New Year’s punishment makes your life better. Doesn’t it?

In contrast, here’s the perspective I prefer to see; it’s a positive beginning. Start the New Year with the view of Joy, Peace, and Contentment. Choose to have compassion for yourself and enjoy all the positive emotions that come with that. Take this chance for improvement and actually improve yourself. Are you interested?

Here’s how. Make one resolution you can accomplish tomorrow and the next day, and the next. Allow this single resolution to be a small gift to yourself. Make it realistic. Make it just enough effort so that you feel a small sense of accomplishment when you succeed in it. Make it something you authentically want. For instance, if you want to lose weight, make your resolution to lose half a pound or part of a kilogram in the next week. If you want to exercise more, start with only five minutes per day. Set a small goal that you can achieve instead of an enormous goal at which you’re unlikely to succeed. When you accomplish your small goal, reward yourself by saying out loud (this is very important), “You rock,” or “Good job,” or “You’re awesome.”  It’s okay to feel good about succeeding!

Take a moment to learn about yourself. Examine your mind and heart. What do you really, Really, REALLY really want? For instance, do you want actually to lose weight and be healthier, or do you want to think you are healthier, even though you aren’t?

There is a subtle but essential difference between the two. We usually have to acknowledge our true motivations before we can make real progress on our desires. We have to deal with the reality of what we want versus the thoughts about what we want.

If we have emotions driving our goals, we feel potent compulsions to satisfy those emotions. Yet, our feelings change from minute to minute. They are not very reliable markers for our authentic desires. Thus, when we satisfy our emotions, we usually don’t feel positive for very long because we haven’t made real progress toward our genuine passions. For example, when managing your company, bossing around the people subordinate to you might “make” you feel like a manager for a few minutes. Still, it will not give you the long-term satisfaction of being a respected leader.

Realistically, it will probably hurt your chances of getting promoted because many bosses may not want an aggressive or threatening management style to move into their ranks. Thus, when you feel the inspiration to behave a certain way or take a specific action, try to look beyond how you feel and focus on your true desires.  Then take small, achievable, positive steps towards achieving your goals.

It’s a matter of which perspective from which you act. You can set an unrealistic goal and punish yourself for not reaching it, or you can make an achievable goal, give yourself a small verbal reward when you succeed, and then repeat the process. The first perspective leads to you causing yourself unnecessary emotional suffering. The other perspective leads to achieving small successes that feel positive, and when you repeat them, you will be closer to achieving a larger goal in your life.

What type of New Year are you going to start with, a negative one or a positive one?

May Joy, Peace, and Contentment fill your day.
Happy New Year.

Posted December 30, 2014
Updated March 15, 2021