Now that we are a month into 2021, I thought I would take time to reflect on my New Year’s resolutions. In past years, I have made (and broke) the usual suspects: lose weight, diet, exercise, etc. While these are good resolutions to make, it seems I almost made them knowing that they will fade with the passing months. They were more of a wish list, it seemed. They are universal, almost generic, goals that we all seek to improve our outward body and physical health. Judging by the commonality of many New Year’s resolutions, it appears we are all almost universally unhappy with our physical selves, and so, as a consequence, we make almost similarly universal generic resolutions. I decided to do something different.

This particular year, in the slowed-down days between the excitement of Christmas and the coming New Year, I experienced a quick-onset physical ailment that laid me up for nearly the full week between the two holidays. It was painful, and for the first time in many years had me thinking of less than positive outcomes. Coming out of that doctor-prescribed medicinal fog, and the pain of the illness, it would have been easy to fall back on my typical resolutions of years past. One would think that the first thing I would wish to do differently was improve my physical health and physical body. Instead, the forced slow down and compelled inactivity caused me to have a very different mindset. I decided that I wanted to change who I was and who I had become over the past year and, if I’m being honest, over the course of many years. I had become an often distant, highly stressed, overly critical person, of myself and those around me. Engaging in self-loathing, and being overly critical of others, is not good for family relationships and friendships.

The shift in mindset this year was not easy. In the course of my self-reflection, I quickly found myself defending and rationalizing my life outlook and behavioral patterns. It was easy to do. Low-hanging fruit, as they say, ripe for easy picking to fill my stress basket. As an attorney, with a highly-stressful practice, work was the first easy blame. It was the long hours, I said. It was the angry or sad phone calls from clients with very real and very personal issues, I told myself. Who wouldn’t have their emotional cup drained at the end of such days? I was justified in my actions, even if they caused others, especially those around me, such emotional pain and discomfort, I thought. Further, in my rationalizations and justifications, I didn’t perceive those around me as doing what I believed they could or should be doing. If only they wouldn’t do this, or if only they would do that, I kept telling myself, I could be a better person and I would see them as being better people. However, the more I thought about it, with true self-criticism and honesty, I realized that it could,and never would, be enough, for them or for me. Whether they had done too much, or not enough, it would always be like goldilocks and the three bears, and I could never obtain the right porridge or the right bed. It had become exhausting, for them and for me. This process of discovery was really more of a painful process for me than the illness, I believe. True honesty has a way of hitting you like a hammer.

After much thought and reflection, and honest evaluation, I made my resolutions this year something that they hadn’t been in the past. Rather than lay down on the old familiar bed of generic feel better, be better sayings and hopes, I decided to do something radically different. My resolutions this year are not generic goals, but very specific action items, to improve my relationships: writing my relatives on a scheduled basis, contacting my adult children about their daily lives, and reaching out to my friends and talking about anything but work. I also resolved to do something prayerful or meditative each day, as well as something purely creative, at least once each day. It has been wonderful.

I also resolved to engage in very specific things when I feel myself getting overly stressed, or if I begin to feel angry, or impatient, irrespective of whatever “cause” that I may have otherwise believed contributed to the situation or how “justified” I may at first feel in having that angered response. When those moments threaten to overcome me, I decided to immediately do something creative, like playing my guitar, writing poetry or song lyrics, and, yes, even this blog, in order to redirect my pent-up energy before causing unnecessary and pointless harm to others with an irrational response. I have found that being creative puts me in a very outward-looking and open-minded mindset. True creating is imaginative, and performed for the sheer joy of the creation, whatever it may be. It has no guile, or hidden agenda, and as my mind explores the physical act of creating, it frees itself up, and loosens the rigid bindings that mentally boxed me into the corner. With a little imagination, things are truly not always as they may at first appear.

Over the past month, many of these mind-centered actions have fortunately evolved to become rather routine for me. These tools have already in this short time helped me overcome many situations that in the past would have most certainly caused me to lash out irresponsibly and, in reality I now know, without just cause. I have still had my moments of pettiness and unjustified anger. But rather than rely on the false rationalizations of the past to justify those episodes, I now try to quickly make amends. I recognize that it is most likely me, and not the situation or the other person, that caused the schism. Then I go to my guitar room, and just play. And the world suddenly seems ok. It’s going to be a fantastic year.

copyright 2021 by D. James Clark – all rights reserved.