New Year, New Perspective

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I hate resolutions.

For a brief time I fell into the trap of setting resolutions every year. Needless to say, I experienced what most people do when they fall off the wagon: discouragement, frustration, a sense of failure, a desire to give up completely and take up wine drinking for the rest of the year to ease the pain.

Then I got wise.

My mistake was I confused resolutions with how I viewed myself. My resolution may have been to stay away from chocolate but what I really wanted was to improve myself, feed my soul, and be a better person. This doesn't happen overnight and it definitely doesn't come without some major hick-ups along the way.

Let me use yoga as an example by telling you WHY I love yoga. There is no such thing as perfection in yoga. There is no real ultimate end goal.* Every time I go to the mat to practice or take time to meditate, the situation is different. My body reacts differently (no matter how I fight it some days), my state of mind is different, even the environment I'm in is different. It's how I deal with these differences and the challenges they represent that is the reward. It's the doing that matters.

Allow me to use another yogic example, the Bhagavad Gita. Dating back to as early as fifth century B.C.E., the Bhagavad Gita is Book Six of the much larger sacred Indian text, the Mahabharata. This text plays a strong role in yogic philosophy and one line that always stuck with me is the following:

“Thou hast power only to act not over the result thereof. Act thou therefore without prospect of the result and without succumbing to inaction”

In other words, get off your butt, work towards your goals, but don't worry about setbacks or immediate results because you can't control them anyways. You may disagree with the last part but what I want you to focus on is the inaction part. Just do. Act to achieve your goals day by day, step by step, and the rewards will co me. Like a lifelong yoga practice, reaching your goals doesn't need to happen without setbacks. In fact, that's completely unrealistic.

But when the setbacks happen, keep moving, don't get discouraged, and before you know it, you will be the person you want to be, drinking wine to boot.

Namaste...and Happy New Year,

Kim

* There is an ultimate goal to the practice of yoga but as it can't be measured in months or even years, I chose leave it out here.

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