Tag: resolutions…

• Who are You Bringing to This New Year?

  I made no resolutions for this upcoming year; I promised it nothing, hoped on even less, and expect zero from the year…for I now realize it isn't up to a year, an event, a somebody or something to deliver to me that which I desire…it is up to me.

  Expecting things from a new year is pretty much hopeless, for the year is waiting on you.

  You and only you will make 2012 a year to be remembered.

  However you spent last year, you will spend this year, Unless and Until you change that which you are doing, saying and being.

  Last year for me was one of great learning, yet on the outside the average person wouldn't have been able to see the inner changes that went on inside.

  My letting go on the inside was big.  Letting go of things having to be a certain way or expecting things flowing and following a certain trail…disappeared.  

  I had been slowly loosening my grip on controlling things, and last year I was shown clearly how it isn't up to me. 

  While it is discerning to stand in a place of No Hope, No Expectations, No Control….it is very freeing. It isn't that I am hopeless, but that I am no longer hoping for things to be different than they are, nor are my expectations exceeding that which the Universe delivers.

  I feel that I am closer than ever to being on the thin line of Now…and singing the same words of the Universe; One verse.

  Just as I can't expect my body to lose weight without me participating, I can't expect the New Year to improve without me being an active partner.

  The year is just a pile of days and how we live each day builds up the flavor of the New Year…and really each moment of every day.

  Somehow we overlook this moment in time.

  Yet yesterday was the first day we added to the Pile called New Year, what was it full of???  Today is the second helping we are adding, what are you doing today?

  The year is of your making…this year is one in your life…Your life is being drawn as you walk through your days.  What you do each day is you.  

  Each day you live your authentic truthful self is singing with the Universe…each day you put aside your feelings, and not say what you need to say, is another day given to denial.

  We keep thinking denial is a big thing, but it is actually many little moments that go by where we are not ourselves.

  We keep expecting the year to deliver to us authenticity, realness, truth, and strength, when it is our choice in each moment of each new year, that decides if our year will actually make a new us.

  We somehow see the new year as a clean slate, when actually it is a year of new moments awaiting a new you.  A you that will arrive that will make a new choice.

  The only way you will get a new year, is if the you who arrives at each new day is willing to act and speak differently.  

  The year follows you…not you it.

  We somehow have this all backwards, that you can leap upon the back of a white new year and be totally different, that the year will save you, create a newness that hasn't been part of you prior.

  When in fact, just as we wake up to each day and greet each moment of time, we too step into the new year.

  It isn't about the year….it is about the You in the year.

  You bring all of you to this new year.  All your actions of past sit with you as you sit staring at the new year.

  Who did you bring to this new year?

  What does she look like and act like?

  Is she someone you would want as a friend and trust as a partner?  

  We keep looking for the year to change us into someone we may like or even love better, when the year has zero power.

  Each of us brings to the year a self…and each of us is the designer and creator of that self.

  A successful year to me is one that has required more and more of me and challenged me to be more of myself, not less.  It has shown me places where I didn't arrive, where I denied myself and ducked in order to be 'liked/approved of/or loved.

  What I bring to this year, is a me that wants to uncover more aspects of me that are not authentic. I want to live at peace with who I am and love being me…and finding joy along the way.  

  Who are you bringing to this New Year?  

   

   

   

  January 2, 2012

  choices, improvement, life, New, resolutions…, self, year, you

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• Who has Control?

  My expectations of the New Year aren’t about the New Year but rather about me.

  The New Year is neutral, a pile of days linked together, and many hours in which we live our lives.

  What we do within those hours is how our year will unfold, or more importantly how we will emerge on the other end.

  I went back on my blog and read some of my entries in January 2010, the beginning of my first 60-day Yoga challenge.

  It was incredible to read about the beginnings of my year doing yoga.

  Below is a section I quoted from Bikram’s book, and it shows the reality of what we are up against when we strive to make changes in our lives, what we are battling is gaining control over the mind.

  “Without control of mind, you can do nothing. You have something, but you don’t know how to use it. The greatest challenge we face as human beings is controlling and properly using our own minds.

  The mind is the communications system between the physical body and the Soul or Spirit; its primary responsibilities are to control the body and supply the Spirit with immediate and exact information. When the mind instead gives distracted and wrong information, the Spirit cannot govern properly – in fact, it cannot assume control at all. The ego-driven mind has had to rule for itself, and now it does not want to give up its ultimate authority over your life. This is a bitter, perverse fact about human beings, but it is the truth.

  Without proper training, the mind will continue to give you the wrong information and divert your focus from your Spiritual goals. The way it does that so successfully is with fear and desire – its primary weapons. Like a drug dealer, the mind gets addicted to these two opposite but conjoined emotions, and when we are constantly reacting to our attractions and aversions to people, things and situations, we can’t see what really is and reopen the channels of our true Self, the Spirit. That’s why I say that the mind has become our worst enemy.

  To overcome this will not be easy. The weak mind is ever growing, constantly feeding on your fears and negative habits. And as my Guru taught me, the natural human attraction to something negative is NINE TIMES more powerful than our gravitational pull to toward the positive- another inconvenient fact.”
  Bikram

  So if you are endeavoring to make changes in your life this upcoming year, please take note, that what you will be going against is a very powerful pull, 9 times stronger than your thought of change.

  Say your desire is to stop eating sweets; you will have the power to eat sweets 9 times stronger.

  And if your desire is to exercise or do yoga each day, you will be fighting a powerful pull 9 times stronger to stay in bed, lay on the couch, and do nothing.

  What I am most impressed with as I look back upon my year of doing yoga (332 out of the 365) is the sheer effort was exerted in getting to the mat.
  Even though the actual 90 minutes of yoga is rough, it is nothing compared to the struggle to begin.

  The real battle is not in the actual doing; it is in the seconds or minutes prior to the event.

  The fight ensues in the actual debate about whether you are going to abstain or succumb.

  To do or not to do is the where the war is fought.

  It isn’t about the sweets, the beer or the exercise; it is about the seconds of power right before, the space before doing or not doing.

  It is on that edge of time, that second where your life is determined, who has control?

  January 1, 2011

  Bikram, changes, control, doing, matter, mind, negative, New, positive, resolutions…, time, verses, Years, Yoga

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• I Can

  As I look backwards on this year I am happy with the way that I stayed the course in yoga, by not succumbing to the voice that wanted me to give it up.

  Between the voice and the lazy feelings that would sometimes overwhelm me, I stayed the course for the greater balance of the year, and I am proud of that.

  What I intended when I began was to take better care of myself, to do something that would begin a change and to do it for 60 days.

  The sixty days turned into 120, than 180 and then 240, it was then I faltered a bit and began missing a few days.

  Yet even in the last month, I have done more yoga than not.

  Tomorrow is the last day of the year, and the tally stands at 331 days of yoga done, (after I do today’s, which I best get going on soon) and 33 days no yoga.

  I am feeling it was a successful yoga year.

  A year of not listening to the voice and feelings that would have me believe, I can’t.

  Learning to overcome the voice by doing, and changing the tone to I can.

  December 30, 2010

  can, can’t, challenge, changes, life, resolutions…, trying, voices, Yoga

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