Well, we’re about a month and a half into 2018. No doubt a number of you have made New Year’s Resolutions. But if you’re like most of us, 40% according to one report on new year’s resolutions, your resolution has already fallen by the wayside.

Why is it so hard to make resolutions stick? Two reasons: First is timing. There are stages to the healing process, one of which is all about committing to yourself and resolving to take action in your life in alignment with that new commitment. The trick to the smoothest healing experience is to connect with the particular stage that the most of you is in at the moment. When you do that, what’s required of you becomes effortless. When you’re trying to make a stage happen it requires a lot of effort and is going to be very hard to sustain. So though the new year is a good time to make a resolution, the timing may not be right for you. Pay closer attention to the themes that are coming up in your life and see if you can trust them a little more.

The second reason that resolutions fizzle has to do with the motivation for making the resolution in the first place. I suggest that if we look closely we’d notice a subtle feeling of worthlessness and a story that goes something like, “Ugh, I hate how I’m so fat. Or What is wrong with me, I’ve got to get my shit together.” In essence it’s the pushing against a part of ourselves that propels us into the resolution.

But it’s a fact of healing that we can never push against a part of ourselves with enough force to escape it. The feeling of worthlessness and the story that goes along with it doesn’t go away just because we look better in the mirror or because our closet is more streamlined now. So it becomes difficult to justify maintaining the new action when the reason for doing it was so we didn’t have to feel the worthlessness or hear ourselves tell the story.

What we’ve got to do is bring more awareness to that feeling and the story and give it permission to be felt without pushing it away. In the process our heart is opening to a disowned part of ourselves and we’re integrating that part. When that part of us is more integrated we can hold it with compassion and when that’s the case our resolutions tend to be motivated by the desire for greater wholeness. When that’s coupled with the right timing, change will happen so quickly and completely you won’t believe it.

Source by Jay Uecker