New Year’s Dissolutions

If you’re anything like me, you’ve now been bombarded by so many articles on making New Year’s Resolutions that you’re exhausted before 2018’s even begun. And that’s not even counting all the meta-articles about why it’s so hard to keep those shiny new resolutions for longer than a couple of days.

Still, there probably are some things you would like to change in your life, and, as arbitrary as it is, the start of another rotation around the sun is as good a time as any to think about how and (more importantly) why to make those changes. But there’s a better way to do this than giving yourself a To Do List that’s going to haunt and depress you for the next 12 months (or until you can’t bear the anxiety anymore, tear it from your wall and burn it in a frenzied, guilty catharsis).

I think of it making some New Year’s Dissolutions. It’s a healthier, smarter way to make lasting change, and it’s backed up by some psychological and spiritual teachers alike.

Here’s the idea:

Start with where you are — because there’s nowhere else you can start from! And where you go next will inevitably be shaped by that starting point; pretending otherwise is a one-way ticket to illicit list-burning. Why you want to change has to be understood before any lasting change can happen.

So let’s take stock: where are we starting from? Instead of building some new thing to bring into an already crowded life, what happens if we break down the things we currently do and see whether their impact is positive, negative, or maybe entirely insignificant?

But more important than the end goal is how we go about it.

The best way to do it isn’t surgically removing parts of your life. We need to dissolve them.

Why dissolving? Well, in part I just like the way it rhymes with ‘resolution’, but aside from trying to be all-too clever, there’s actually something really important to the idea. Dissolving something doesn’t mean casting it out like an unwanted animal; when a substance dissolves, it loses its solidity and is absorbed into the greater whole. In this case, it’s dissolved into our Self, into our being; it’s not gone, but its particles have been spread out into something much greater and more integrated.

This is important because when we start trying to change our habits, we often go about it brashly and even cruelly. Frequently, we start by aggressively stating ‘I’m not going to do X anymore’, and reject the habit outright. We throw it out into the cold and dismiss it – ‘I can’t believe I ever thought smoking was a good idea!’, or ‘I can’t believe I stayed in that relationship so long!’ But we’re doing ourselves no favours by being so cut and dried: life and growth isn’t like that.

Those habits, thoughts or relationships were important to us for a long time. We can’t just disown them without disowning and rejecting some part of ourselves and our experience. It’s not healthy, but more importantly it simply doesn’t work. It’s an act of aggression against ourselves, a suppression and a denial of something that — even if it was ultimately a negative influence — still happened and inescapably shaped our trajectory from then to now.

As the incredible Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön puts it,

‘Trying to change ourselves doesn’t work in the long run because we’re resisting our own energy’.

We have draw our demons close and accept them before they can be dissolved.

Compassionate acceptance of what has been — what’s led us to now — is essential for us to grow and develop.

This is true even of trauma. Nobody recovers from childhood trauma by suppressing or denying it; nobody ever truly overcomes an addiction by refusing to accept that it happened and is a part of them. Like the famous ‘5 Stages of Grief’, we only find peace when we’ve passed from denial into acceptance.

Ah, but what about when we want to do something new, I hear you New Years Resolvers cry! Well, these are two sides of the same coin. Wanting to do something new is always defined by wanting to change something about the present. If we take a closer look at what’s dissatisfying us now, we can reach a much clearer awareness of why we henceforth want something different.

The likes of Tim Ferriss regularly reflect on what they want to do less of in the coming months and years. That creates a lot of space for new experiences, rather than trying to cram yet another meditation-yoga-diet-painting class into your already overwhelming schedule.

So if we’re going to make some positive changes in the New Year, a healthier way to begin than trying to lop off some part of ourselves is to see what behaviours, habits and relationships we can dissolve and thereby transform.

This will obviously be unique for everyone, but here’s a few broad questions to help get you going.

1. Does spending time with certain people ultimately leave you feeling drained and less like your best self? Do they complain all the time but never seem to listen to advice? Do you find yourself being more negative and complainey around them? Maybe it’s time to take some distance and dissolve that habit. Value the friendships or relationships for what they were or are, but don’t keep them going if, in their current form, their impact is negative for you (and indeed them by enabling their negative behaviour).
2. Do you have an addiction you’d rather be free of? Whether it’s chemical, physical or emotional, can you ask yourself why you do it and what you hope to get from it? Are you getting the outcome you really want? Can you access the underlying drive and find a healthier way (in your own eyes) to feed or express that urge? As the newest research shows, all addiction comes down to why you do or consume something, not the thing itself. So what’s your why, and how can you integrate that less destructively into your life? (And no, switching from crack to dangerously excessive exercise won’t, in the long run, make you feel any better.)
3. Do you want to change your body? Why? If it’s ultimately about how other people treat you, then you’re trying to change yourself for the sake of outside opinion. External validation is never going to make up for the internal shortfall. I know from my own experience that when I started eating healthier and hitting the gym for myself (because it felt good; because I enjoyed the ritual; because I like to feel strong and alive in my body), I was no longer chasing the dragon of other people’s validation that I was attractive. Once I accepted I’d been driven by shame rather than self-love, I was able to change my whole relationship to my body.

These are just a few starting points; there’s endless others. The principle for all of them is the same, though:

1. Start where you are with compassion and acceptance
2. Ask yourself why you want to make a change and dissolve the unhelpful story you’ve been telling yourself until now
3. Allow yourself to grow into the space that process of dissolution leaves behind

There is no resolution without dissolution; no lasting growth without integration and acceptance of what we have and are now.

Thanks for reading and in 2018, remember to be silly, be kind, and be weird.