Imagine approaching a cashier at your local coffee house. Its October 22, 2008. She hands you your order and with a polite smile asks: "What is something you are unhappy with inside you that you are really trying to change right now?" What a gorgeous question that if asked randomly, softly, acceptably and untethered to the current date would elevate all our consciousness as we took an honest minute to introspect our pre-programmed behaviors. Has the New Year's resolution question lost its literal meeting and simply substitutes for a greeting this time of year?

I am intrigued by my conflicting thoughts on the occurrence.  I am grateful that the notion of a New Year’s resolution can prompt a much deeper than usual greeting question between acquaintances.  Asking someone if there is something they wish to acknowledge they wish to change about themselves, and having them share it openly is a window of genuine honesty that is very beautiful.  The genesis of the word ‘resolution’ however, is synonymous with employing willpower to change behavior.  A terrific start! But, we must acknowledge that willpower is by definition always and only temporary.  Without integrating your new lifestyle choice with your values, the only way we will maintain our willpower in the face of contrary impulses we are bound to face in the New Year is to ‘power’ our way through it.  For example: Say someone wishes to give up their routine of getting a muffin or doughnut on the way to work in the morning and replace it with a healthier or less caloric alternative.  Unless we have aligned our values with this altering of our behavior - we begin to feel we are giving up a pleasure we’ve earned on the way to work.  We will then have strong desires to self sabotage because our mind is conflicted about what it really wants.  This is a simple and minute example of the paradox we face that stops us from accomplishing much more important and grander intentions.  Our wiring is crossed.  We must recognize it, and consciously ‘untangle’ it if we wish to unlock ourselves from just existing on auto pilot.  One thing that humans will go to great length to avoid (this manifests itself in so many ways outside the scope of this particular article) is the notion of ‘missing out’.  If we decide to make a resolution that is contrary to this genetic programming, we will suffer more than we will benefit from the change.  Regardless of whether we stick to it or not.  We need instead, to look at the direction of the change we wish to make and assess it based upon what our values are.  Yes, this is much more work initially than simply invoking willpower, but it is the only strategy that can manifest a long term result.  Our values determine our behaviors in the long run.  In the short term, if we are simply using willpower without an examination of our values we will suffer inner conflict no matter how 'well' the change is going.  We will feel deprived of our old habit, or we will feel guilty at our lack of ability to consistently make this behavioral change… until we tell ourselves its okay to fall from the ideal we tried to set.  This cyclical pattern only robs us of our confidence in our self to make similar changes in the future.  We become weaker.  The good news is, that if you can unlock your hierarchy of values and tailor the change you wish to make to them, you can easily adopt a new pattern of behavior.  The bad news is that, we often mistaken the behavior for being in conflict with ourselves - and that leads us to the intellectually easy (lazy) and simple solution of merely changing the behavior.  Unfortunately, the real problem is that it is a value that is in conflict with another value - which causes the behavior.  It is deeper, more painful to acknowledge, more work, but the truth of the problem.  Tailor the resolution, or work on sorting out your confliction in values, and you will have your result without maintenance. 

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