Anxiety creating?
Some people resolve to not have new years resolutions due to the pressure they experience around them, others set them with the proviso that if they make it through January sticking to them, they will be happy. In fact, the whole subject seems to be fraught with the emotions of guilt, anxiety, foreboding of future failure and buckets full of self-judgment.
So, I asked myself – can it be another way? Can we inspire ourselves to positive change without forceful will, emotional agony and self-recrimination?
The Urgency of Being
Recently, I’ve been considering urgency and feeling the potential of reclaiming this principle to support living to my fullest potential.
Unfortunately urgency has been mostly used as a word that induces anxiety. For example, as the header of CAPITAL typed emails that infer you have not done something important. In many cases, urgency seems to initiate an increased heartbeat, adrenalin creation and sweaty palms. Physically it places us in survival, flight or fight mode.
However, is this the true nature of urgency? Agency means one who acts, and urge indicates our impulse and enthusiasm towards acting. So simply put urgency recognizes our nature as agents of change and identifies our motivation to act based on desire for a certain direction of change. Thus, ‘I urge to act’, or ‘I desire to create’ might be an accurate translation.
Experiencing Urgency
I’m authentically connected to the experience of urgency when I remember that the moment that is happening right now is unique, it will never happen again in quite same way. For example, the moment of friends gathered on a certain occasion, or an experience of hearing wind in the trees, or seeing a certain view. All of these are universal once only events. Every moment life is changing.
If we choose to resist the constant changing nature of reality, this might in one sense create anxiety. Kierkegaard and other philosophers also identify an ‘existential anxiety’ that can be a response to looking for meaning in life. Our shock and overwhelm at handling the ‘unbearable lightness of Being’ that Milan Kundera writes about.
If you do experience anxiety on whatever level, (fear of failure, feelings of guilt about things not done, or in realizing your mortality and that each day is precious to be lived fully), I suggest that you be with your experience – notice how it travels through you as an energy, notice the emotions and thoughts that come to mind, become a witness. Then allow yourself to consider, even within this reality, (i.e. we are likely to make mistakes, we are born and die.), what will I choose now? How will I engage with life now? What is my authentic response?
Creating from urgency of Being
If we accept this Now, moment-by-moment living, we can gain a new experience of urgency. One of alertness, appreciation for the moment and valuing of life. It can raises questions, such as
- What do I want to be and give now?
- What is my experience right now?
- What is the highest potential for this moment?
In experiencing the uniqueness of this moment, I’m awakened to living and feel inspired to overcome any personal limitations and offer the best of me. I’m alerted to the huge creative potential here, now. From this place of authentic urgency, my resolve to be my greatest capacity comes from a desire to realize who I am in the activity of living.
This for me is the most powerful and motivational spirit from which to create new years resolutions. It’s my experience that from this perspective, new years resolutions undergo a paradigm shift:
- From fixing deficiencies To liberating you to be who you are
- From defining your worth/success/failure To tools for uncovering the true self
- From tasks we should do To actions that demonstrate self-love and understanding.
- From limitations To experiencing new possibilities
Acting from Urgency of Being, I suggest a few pointers to re-establishing an inspired relationship with your New Years Resolutions.
- Create in the NOW: instead of a fixed burden that must remain with you for the coming 12 months, they are habits and goals that seek to remind you of your presence and potential in this moment. I suggest letting go of the thought – I must do this all year/achieve this by end of the year. And rather bring to mind the habit or goal regularly – feel your connection, desire and motivation for it, only then act.
- Ask, what would be a joyful and creative way to achieve your goals? One of the best new years resolutions I made and kept was to have a dinner party a month, to cook food I had not cooked before for at least 6 people. My goal achieved my desire to connect more with friends and use the shelf of cookbooks that had thus far been unopened. I share this as its possible to create meaningful new years resolutions that are fun!
- Personalize the language of your new years resolutions. If you want to get fit, don’t simply say, ‘I must exercise’ but find your connection and value in exercising. Thus for me, I recognize my body as a temple for my soul (and thus want it to be fully energized) and through loving my body I grow in self-love – as such I’m motivated to create a habit of regular exercise.
I wish you an inspired journey to explore what urgency means for you, and to support you in this paradigm shift in your New years resolutions, I have created a guided audio meditation. This will support you in the process of reflecting on what you want to create for this year and connecting with your motivation for that creation.
To download the audio meditation – follow this link. You will need to log in, and go through address steps etc, (you can leave it blank), then click on downloads to pick it up.
Wish you a peaceful, joyful, fulfilled and auspicious 2012.
