Photo: discover your passion

Happy New Year to everyone out there. This first post of the year on Living Holistically will hopefully detail – and guide – what you will find here this year.

Though I can add my excitement to the fresh start of a new year, I still find myself eying wearily the ‘wratcheting-up’ I’m witness around me.

It’s normal – a new year date on the calendar can feel like a clean slate. Time to dust off those mothball covered running pants and slightly moldy sneakers and make your way to the gym. Or to sit on a mat every morning at 5am to meditate away the stress. We’ll be a free and happy people in no time!

Unfortunately, though, our new year’s resolutions tend to fail more often than stick (and the weight-loss industry counts on it). But we are a stubborn crew; most of us have a list set and ready to go on January 1st, trying once again.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to change for the better. For trying to feel more energy, for cutting out those large mochawhathaveyous and frenchfriedtwinkieturduckens. For becoming the ultimate yogini who only eats Whole Foods gluten-free vegan chocolate-covered pretzels as a treat. It’s okay.

But here I go with that saying I know most of you have heard: what’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (yep, your parade has now officially been hit by Christine’s rain.)

Hopes and dreams are some of the best parts of being human. I LOVE to dream – it reinvigorates me when I’m brought down by the cold hard reality of work. And goals ground those dreams, and gets them done when that reality becomes exasperating.

Yet, maybe not fulfilling last year’s resolution(s) – or goals – has less to do with your lack of will-power or laziness (favorite terms for our culture to use against people). Maybe it has more to do with the fact that those goals are coming from the outside world, telling you what you should be doing.

Maybe they aren’t authentically what you want to be doing.

The Conundrum of Change

What is real change? We like to put a definition or a boundary on what change looks like – we are a results-based people. Did we achieve what we set out to do or fail?

Photo: Cam Vilay

It’s a western approach to the art of change, one that may seem innate in us considering it was bred so young. Plus, it’s constantly being reinforced in our daily lives and damn, it’s hard to stay steady in your own definition when everyone is telling you you “how it is”.

Scandalously, I’m going to posit to you that change is a little bit harder to define than what we can write down on a piece of paper.

Change is more about defining your larger purpose, and moving toward it.

What do I mean? Well, here’s an example: if you are starting out as a freelance writer and you write down on a piece of paper, “I want to publish 15 paid articles this year,” it’s easy to look back the next year and see if you accomplished your goal. But does this mean you are a better writer than if you hadn’t published 15? What if you’d only published 5? What if you didn’t publish any at all, but had written three times more blog posts which were read by many more people than 15 articles would have been?

Yes, you didn’t accomplish the definitive goal of having 15 paid published articles that year, but isn’t the larger goal being a writer? Writing makes you a writer, not the places you’ve been published.

Swap those 15 articles for 15 (or 150) pounds. Most of us have a definitive amount of weight we want to lose, and watch the scale very closely to make sure it is so. Until we lose it. Then we want to lose more. Or we “fail” to lose it, then feel bad about ourselves as we polish off one of those Otis Spunkmeyer muffins.

It doesn’t matter that we might have lost 5 pounds. It doesn’t matter that we were feeling more energetic, less energetically rollercoastery throughout the day. It doesn’t matter that we started reconnecting with our bodies. We didn’t lose what we set out to lose.

What if losing weight is the wrong goal? What if finding ways to be more connected and in love with your body is the right one? Most people want to lose weight because they think they’ll feel better. What if feeling better is more dependent on being in touch with your body than it is on lifting weights?

Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty

To me, there is a difference between regular goals and “soul” goals. “Regular” goals are often those somehow imposed by the outside world. “Soul” goals are the ones, well, your soul yearns for.

I’m not saying throw your New Year’s resolutions out the passenger-side window of a moving car. But it may be worth taking a look at your list and thinking about the bigger things you want out of your-very-own life.

And yes, you still have to institute specific changes in order to bring soul goals to fruition. For me, one of my soul goals this year is to ground myself in my life, including my work, relationships, food, and movement. I can be too flighty, which takes me off course too often.

In order to become more of who I already am, I know I must re-direct some of my inclinations toward taking on too many projects, and dropping old ones as I take on new ones. I understand that meditation helps me with grounding. Therefore, I have to meditate more often to feel more grounded.

But I’m not going to say, “I will meditate every day for an hour this year.” Nope, done that before and it didn’t work. Instead, I’m remaining conscious that when I get caught up in a whirlwind, meditation is the answer that helps me. Because I know this is true on a gut level (instead of someone else telling me I should do it), the more I employ this technique, and the longer this “resolution” sticks around. The closer I get to being fully me.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what I’m talking about, what are your soul goals?

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