types of resolutions
Aumatma made the funny point of how everyone in the circle that shared their resolutions had these super meaningful goals – focusing more on the present moment, meditating more, searching for their personal source of negativity and eliminating it, being more conscious of x – so she broke that cycle saying she wanted to shed some pounds. Obviously a joke, but it made me aware of the different shapes resolutions can take. As far as my perception takes me, I broke them down into three types – self-internal, self-external, selfless.
All of those deep resolutions would be self-internal. The weight loss, the exercise more, redesigning a house, getting a project done or whatever – those are self-external. Selfless would be a resolution to serve, to do something in the spirit of compassion without expectation. That can take form in many ways, but I think that it’s this last type of resolution that doesn’t get enough attention. I think it’d be great to make one type of each one of these resolutions a year.
I’m a big believer that you can make a change whenever you want. There’s little significance to January 1, but what’s really special about it is the spirit of change that’s in the air. The communal change that’s being made (or at least, attempted) is really inspiring, and I think there should be more organized attempts to leverage the power of communities. One of these attempts is something I’ve been working on with Chaz Howard, the chaplain at Penn called Resolution11. It’s a humble attempt, but I think it has the right idea (if I do say so myself J).
