The following reflection originally appeared in the newsletter I sent out on January 5th, 2021.

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Entering a new year marks the passage of time, often evokes reflection, and gets people motivated to push themselves into new directions — in other words, it’s a time for resolutions!

Of course, I’m of the school of thought that any beautiful quality of mind, like gratitude, generosity, joy, letting go, or making resolutions, is not just for a token few weeks, but for all year round.

Over the years, for periods ranging from one month to indefinitely, I’ve made resolutions to abstain from sugar, soda, processed foods, meat & dairy, alcohol & other intoxicants, Amazon & Walmart, sex & masturbation & pornography, sleeping in, and listening to music while driving, among others. I’ve likewise made resolutions to “figure out how to not be apathetic all time,” practice yoga everyday, enact “wake up get up,” to stay a monk until I’ve got what I’ve been looking for, write at least 10 minutes a day, and so on.

I share some of these examples just to say that resolutions are a practice I’m very fond of, and they have been the catalyst for some tremendous growth and movement into integrity in my life.

In Buddhist psychology, the power of resolve is considered one of the 10 “spiritual perfections” possessed by fully awakened people.  The word in the Pali language for this power is adhiṭṭhāna, which literally translates as something like, to stand on a foundation.  In plainer English, this could be translated as resolution, resolve, commitment, determination, taking a stand, or making a vow.

Personally, I like the word vow.  It has a gravity to it that hits me in the gut.  To put it another way, I have lots of intentions, but I make few vows.

I don’t mess around with my vows.

In turn, when you’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions, I encourage you to not just willy nilly toss out some good intentions, but to really consider something you’d like to give yourself to.

I like to differentiate three parts of a vow.  The first is a “wildly important goal,” the second is the specific vow we’re making, and the third is any strategies or tactics that would be helpful in staying course.

The Wildly Important Goal is our why.  I’ve found for myself that if I don’t have a deeper felt reason for making a resolution, it usually peters out.  I once made an impulsive resolution to do outside back-and-forth walking meditation until sunset — it was about six hours away, raining and 35 degrees outside.  After a couple hours, I started reflecting, “why am I doing this?,” and I couldn’t come up with any compelling reason other than “to see if I can.”  While that reason may stir my heart into action at other times, it wasn’t deeply compelling to me at that time, and so I let go of that resolution.

In other words, when we’re thinking about making a vow or resolution, it’s important to ask ourselves, “what wildly important goal does this help me achieve?”

Maybe it’s enlightenment, being healthy, having harmonious relationships, opening our hearts, providing for our family, being peace, or putting the dharma at the center of our life.  It could be anything — the primary rule is that you really have to believe in it.  We might say “open my heart,” but do we really want that bad enough to let go of all resentment, to forgive radically, to see the best in people, to release all negative thoughts about ourselves or others, etc.  If we want it bad enough — if it’s truly one of our wildly important goals — then making a resolution will be that catalyst to a deeper version of ourselves, and we’ll simply make it happen.

Finally, I’m not going to get too into tactics & strategy, but here are a few keys points to help you stay the course with your resolution:

1. Make it neither too difficult nor too easy — just enough to challenge you.
2. Define right away what success looks like.
3. Start with a specific time period (i.e. one month).
4. Only make one vow/resolution at a time.
5. Consider other strategies that you personally have found successful in the past; i.e. making yourself accountable, setting up your environment in a certain way, creating a spreadsheet, etc.

If you’d like to make a New Year’s resolution, consider taking a half-hour to contemplate these questions.  As a note, sometimes I start with the WIG, but most often, I have some intuition for a resolution, so I start with #4 and work backward.

1. What is my Wildly Important Goal?
2. On a heart level, do I truly believe the worthwhileness of that goal?
3. Why?
4. What is my resolution?
5. How does this resolution directly connect to my Wildly Important Goal?
6. For how long will I make this a formal resolution (knowing I can always make it indefinite after an initial period of “strong conviction”)?
7. How will I measure it?
8. Do I have any pre-approved exceptions?

Here one for me that’s been brewing for a while: for the next three months, I will maintain screen-free Saturdays, with a shortlist of pre-approved exceptions (i.e. Google maps, teaching, functional text messages, etc.).  This will help me embody my Wildly Important Goal of “putting the dharma at the center of my life.”

 

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