I’ve never been a fan of New Years’ resolutions:  I forget about them shortly after I make them, and even when I devise ways of documenting and checking them at the end of the year, I can never remember where I’ve put the list.  I may have a subconscious reason for misplacing them, but I’ve not been motivated enough to figure out why!  So this year I thought about how I might use the resolution practice in a different way that might serve me well.  I wanted to share my thoughts with you.

Setting Personal Intentions

                Instead of resolutions, I realized that intentions can be very powerful for me if I’m committed to them.  If I intend to forgive myself when I’m hard on myself, for instance, and I hold that intention in a very deep way, the intention will more likely show up when I’m being self-critical, to nudge me about what I’m doing.  So rather than trying to stop being self-critical (which is so deeply ingrained in me that I will likely do it to some extent for the rest of my life), I can show compassion for myself when I do it, and eventually I will do it for shorter periods, less often, or with less energy.  So the intention helps me be realistic about my expectations for growth and also supports me in these efforts which I’ve been making for a while.  One ingredient in making an intention is that it sustains and expands on my personal lifework.

Setting Relationship Intentions

                In setting an intention, I thought about the role of gratitude in my life.  Gratitude naturally arising has been a blessing in my life.  Yet I have set an intention in this year to live in gratitude even more!  Again, this intention is in one sense already present in my life; setting the intention to allow even more gratitude to arise can have even greater consequences.  It allows me even more to appreciate the little things that are so abundant in my life:  sunshine;  the sound of the wind rushing through the trees; Jerry making us tea; a shared moment of laughter with a friend; the neighbor’s dog throwing her toy around. . . all these things give me great joy and appreciation for the life I’m living.

                Even better, when I experience gratitude, it expresses itself in my relationship with others:  concern for their well-being; a hug; a word of comfort; an intimate sharing of life . . . in those moments, my gratitude has become a catalyst to intimacy and caring.

Carrying Out Intentions

                To help my intentions come alive, I try to limit the big ones so that I’m not overwhelmed by trying to do too much.  I think, too, that my intention has an aspect that can help me grow in a different way.  Although I often experience gratitude, I don’t think that I express it to others, not only in relation to them, but sharing with them my gratitude about life in the moment it occurs.  I contemplate my experiences of gratitude, but sometimes I feel self-conscious about verbalizing them.  So I’m hoping to shift my perspective in a way that suggests that expressing gratitude around others is, more than anything else, a gift to all of us:  a gift that is precious, intimate and loving.

Wisely Working with Intention

                There is one more thing I know I’ll want to remind myself of, as I work with my intention to expand my openness to experiencing gratitude.  Now that I’ve set the intention, I want to let it go.  To me, that doesn’t mean that I’m already giving up on it, but I hold it delicately, softly, so that it doesn’t become a “should have” or “need to.”  Holding an intention can show up, if I’m not attentive, as a kind of grasping, a command to myself rather than a blessing.  So the purpose I have for my intention to open to gratitude is to hold that intention like a delicate bird, appreciate its beauty, and simply let it rest in the palm of my hand.