Finally break through – The ultimate hack for your New Year’s resolutions

It’s that time of year again when so many of us are in the midst of trying to achieve our New Year’s resolutions.  Perhaps on day 22 of 2017, though, you’re exactly where you said you didn’t want to be already — sliding on the slipperiness of New Year’s resolutions that felt so possible in the intoxicating haze of goals set amidst holiday euphoria.  Resolutions that are birthed with the belief that along with the sunrise on 1/1/17, we will break through old barriers and be given a totally new “us” that will allow us to conquer whatever worlds we’ve failed to conquer in the past.  Along with our New Year’s Day morning steamy triple-shot espresso, we imagine a super-charged self – we can conquer the world!!  Until…. reality hits through the sobering, mundane day to day life and the hard work it truly takes to make any change to our routine-driven lives.  Your formerly super-charged, invincible, triple-shot self instead feels about as inspired as a watered down cup of decaf coffee. You start to question why in the world you believed this year could really be so transformative and true change feels impossible, or far too difficult to bother.

However, when I was feeling this quicksand-like slide into feeling defeated before I’d started, I was reminded to take a look in the mirror.  What did I see?  Whom did I see?  Really see.

Our self-image strongly held essentially determines what we become.  Dr. Maxwell Maltz

For so many of us, virtually by the time we were crawling under the covers on 1/1/2017, those amazingly possible goals and hopes and absolute assurances of 2017 being “MY YEAR!”, had dwindled just a little bit and were swallowed up by the cacophony of what may feel infinitely more familiar…self-defeating, self-criticizing, fear-focused thoughts that weave their way from our unconscious to our conscious selves.  Then those grew more than our action on said resolutions.  We wonder why hasn’t life changed under the pressure of huge expectations, hopes, dreams, convictions?  How are we ever going to make the huge transformation we’d hoped and been determined to make, the one we felt was so necessary?  What were we thinking when we actually believed that my Creator’s Big Plan for my life would really come true?! Hello?!  We tell ourselves it’s time for a reality check pronto.

“Our self-image and our habits tend to go together.  Change one and you will automatically change the other.” (Dr. Maxwell Maltz).

Just who is that familiar face looking back at us so often when we look in the mirror?  Look closely.  What and whom do YOU see?  While it may seem to be a benign, clear reflection, it’s often that of our failed selves.  The self that is in our fears, worst nightmares — inadequate, incapable, unimportant, not special, no influence and always disappointing.  The self who definitely cannot achieve New Year’s resolutions…or ANY resolutions for that matter.   Definitely not those resolutions that felt so REAL and POSSIBLE when you set them.

However, perhaps the most important New Year’s resolution we all can make this  year is to see our TRUE self in the mirror.  Not the self we’re used to seeing through the eyes of our stymied past, but instead through the eyes of our fantastic future — the eyes that can see the power in your past, the faith in your future, the imagined impact of our actions on the world.  Believe it or not, that’s how you and I are Divinely Seen!  Not only that, but it’s also the environment in which we were created.  THAT amazing, capable version of you and I is just as real, reliable and authentic as the failed-self…in fact infinitely more so!

God sees in you, what you can’t see in yourself. – Unkown

Our thoughts, perceptions and beliefs determine the course of our lives.  It is an “AHA” moment for so many of us when we realize this..better than the most potent espresso, and, at the same time, harder to take action on than fitting into skinny jeans after too many Christmas goodies.  But that’s precisely WHY we can’t rely on our own eyes and why we must use the eyes of our Creator as our guide for our REAL appearance in the mirror and for the self through which we start taking action on those resolution.  Those Divine eyes trust in each of us  They see that amazing, impactful  significant, successful, loving, healthy, powerful version of me. Take hold of THAT version.  Let it breathe and see light and greet the world.  If you and I do, daily, intentionally, mindfully — 2017 (and beyond) WILL be all you and I had hoped it could be!

Where the mind goes, the man follows .  It’s impossible to have a negative mind and a positive life.  Joyce Meyer

Here’s to your year!

Blessings always,

Amy