Will Valentine's Day be the chocolatey grave for your good intentions or your download of love to fuel renewed commitment to your goals? The power of choice lies within you, but studies show that more than a third of us have already thrown in the sweat-stained towel before the month of hearts and flowers begins.
Not only does Valentine's Day offer the perfect excuse to splurge with our money, time or sugar, it's also six weeks into the year. By day 42 of a new habit you may have created a whole new groove in your life. If you've succeeded this far, don't blow it now! Find ways to mindfully include the celebratory aspects of this romantic day in your new routine. Make the gym a date or change up your workout routine to include your partner's favorite activity tonight. Have the chocolate, but instead of buying a heart full of gooiness the size the gut you're trying to loose, buy one or two exquisite hand made chocolates and make the enjoyment of it the focus of desert, or try some sipping chocolate. Crazy rich and sure to satisfy.
But if those studies referenced above are right, 65% of us are shirking the remnants of good intentions and resigning ourselves to the mediocrity we'd resolved to rise from. How can Valentine's Day reinvigorate your once shiny intentions? Valentine's Day is not only a day for celebrating romantic love (though don't forget to do that!), but also a day to reflect on the beauty and value and spark in our lives. The familiar dictum that you have to love yourself to love anyone else well may sound like a justification for indulgence, but love really requires an honest, compassionate appraisal of its object. Otherwise, it's just a crush, or at best lust.
Steps to revivifying your resolution:
1. On your drive/walk/ride to work today, reflect on the obstacles to your initial resolution. Here are some of the ways we veer from even our best intentions:
- not enough: feeling like there's not enough time, money, energy or other resource to honor the commitment.
- lack of planning: the fly by the seat of your pants approach may seem romantic, but without some considered follow-up, even the hottest of fly-by affairs fizzle into regret and forgetfulness.
- too much: making big plans sometimes feels grand in broad strokes, but often these plans lack actual realizing steps and a grasp of the possible.
2. When you have an idea what obstacle you succumbed to, go one level deeper and allow yourself to relax into how that feels. How does it feel to acknowledge you don't have enough time to honor that intention? This part you can do alone, at lunch or after work, because you need to be able to fully express these emotions to see the gems they hide.
3. Now, before we go into any practical planning, ask yourself how you're going to care for that feeling you just evoked, expressed and acknowledged. Yep, it's there. It's holding you back. But only because you turn your back. So don't. Imaginatively embrace a child having the same emotion, or even your own imaginative self. Breathe in and imagine a quality that soothes this emotion flooding your body as you do. Breathe out imagining ease in your chest.
You may want to repeat this exercise more than once. When you're ready, create a simple, practical plan to address the obstacle you identified in step one. Honest, compassionate appraisal of needs and resources is vital for the love to flow. Here are some ideas for each of the classes of obstacle:
- not enough: rather than starting with what does my goal need from me (to be fit, i must do 45 minutes of cardio 5 days a week), start with what you can carve out for your goal (I can wake up 30 minutes early for a walk-jog before work, or 15 minutes for some yoga). The truth is that by starting small and giving what you have, you'll create positive changes that will snowball into bigger changes. Eventually, you'll find that time/money/energy. But today, find what you have.
- lack of planning: plan to plan. Set aside an hour this weekend, or whenever you take your leisure time, to create an actual plan. Write down everything you need to realize this intention: find a gym on the way to work; ask partner for support in the form of making dinner; throw away the emergency Snickers in the bottom drawer, replace with almonds. Make as many steps as you need, and commit to taking one each week. Maybe that seems slow, but the fast approach hasn't worked, so put it on your calendar and give it a go.
- too much: okay, you didn't loose 20 pounds in January. Big deal. No one did. Really. So investigate your right sized goal. Too much is the inverse of not enough, and often we plan too much because we feel like we have or are not enough. So consider what would be just enough. Let it even seem measly, pittling, small. Just make it something you're pretty sure you can accomplish. Actually accomplishing it will feel far better than failing to accomplish something flashy.
What were your resolutions? How is your progress toward realizing them? I'd love to hear your successes and struggles! Share them in the comments below.
Comments