Resolving Resolutions: How Will You Begin the New Year?

This is the time of year when many of us think about making resolutions.

The diet industry would certainly like to sell us on the concept that this is the perfect time to resolve to lose weight, despite significant evidence about Why Diets Don’t Work and how they can in fact even be physically and/or emotionally damaging.

How does it serve us to start the year out with a focus on what we will not do? With focusing on the negative? On things that we deem wrong or flawed within ourselves?

What if instead we focused on what we can add to our lives? I like to think in terms of goals or intentions instead of resolutions. I believe there can in fact be power in the act of writing down our intentions. I’d like to encourage phrasing them in positive terms rather than negative. Think about what you can add rather than what you need to avoid or stop. The latter can set us up for feelings of deprivation, never a good motivator.

A Blog I have enjoyed following via Twitter, More of Me To Love suggests a revolutionary resolution for 2010:

I resolve to be more loving toward myself this year

 

What would it be like to adopt this resolution? Try repeating it to yourself now and see how it feels. Are you uncomfortable making this statement about yourself? If so, this is very likely an issue that needs your attention!

How would you behave if you were more loving to yourself? Would you stop some of the negative self-talk running through your mind? Would you treat yourself with the compassion you extend to others? Would you forgive yourself?

These are themes I intend to elaborate on in 2010. This is my “resolution”: to keep talking about how we can harness the power of love, self-love in this case, to continue healing from the impact of trauma.

Wishing you all a New Year full of healing and love.

Kathleen Young, Psy.D.