Forget New Year Resolutions. Write Your Intentions.
If you are writing new year resolutions, you missed the message 2020 was trying to convey.
Pat on your back if you’ve made New Year resolutions for 2021!
Give yourself an extra pat, if you have written them down.
Now tear them up.
Well, what’s wrong with new year resolutions?
New Year resolutions are similar to a Ponzi scheme. They are, by design, a part of the process of manifestation.
These are techniques that were popularised by Rhonda Byrne in her book The Secret, a few years back. She shares methods that allow you to harness the power of your subconscious mind to develop a laser-sharp focus on your goals and attract circumstances to make them a reality. Yet, there are a few problems.
Resolutions are so specific, that they can be limiting.
They are inherently specific. And once you begin to focus your mental energies on your goal, you won’t remain agile. It is nearly impossible to then change your course, if new information becomes available or if the dream no longer aligns with what you truly, and sincerely want.
How many hobbyist musicians do you know, who are still living out the dream that their 19 year-old self had, of becoming a doctor? I know more than a few!
Such attachment to written goals and lists of resolutions may be useful for achieving a focussed outcome. However, they pose the danger of taking you away from your true self, once they stop serving your original intent.
You may become obsessively attached to your resolutions.
People say that we need to set our goals and write out our dreams, work towards them but not be attached to them. This piece of well-meaning advice is an oxymoron.
Many of you probably follow manifestation techniques a la The Secret. My observation is that the goal-setting, dream-building and reality-bending manifestation techniques that initially serve as a robust ladder, soon become crutches.
It is in the very nature of most manifestation techniques to make you obsessed with your dreams. For these methods to work, you must believe that you already have what you desire and to entertain no possibility of failing to achieve it.
Manifesting what you want becomes an addictive way of life, like an endless game — fun in the beginning, and a hamster-wheel, thereafter.
New year resolutions are elusive.
What if you were content in meeting your desires in an incremental way, year after year? Wouldn’t that be a great life still?
It would, if that really happened. But it won’t because this is an illusion — a really persistent one.
Have you ever met a person who ticked off everything on her bucket list? Probably not, because our endless stream of new goals keeps the bucket full, literally!
We keep moving our goal posts! Every year we keep adding to our resolutions, don’t we?
Achieving them is unlikely to bring contentment and lasting happiness. Once you reach them this year, which I sincerely pray you do, you will set a steeper target next year. The anticipated elation will remain elusive, always slipping, just out of reach when you think you’ve achieved it.
My experience with goal-setting and manifestation
I have been setting goals, vision board-ing, visualising and using the power of the subconscious mind to manifest my plans since my middle-school years. My academic and professional success has been a result of the hard work and dedication of a lot of well-wishers, but the magic of manifestation techniques played a critical role too.
And yet, two decades later, my understanding of how dreams manifest has evolved.
I am able to see that goal-setting is a good starting point to gain clarity, and that manifestation techniques are effective ways of channelling focus and energy in that direction. But once you’ve experienced their power, and their limitations, it is time to move on.
If not goals, then what? Set intentions.
Intentions bear your soulprint
Intentions, on the other hand, bear your soulprint. Coined by Mindvalley founder Vishen Lakhiani, your soulprint is a unique set of values and principles which are meaningful to you. Intentions are broad enough to keep up with your evolving self. When your truest self changes, intentions automatically update themselves, in real-time.
Intentions are guidelines on how you want to live, whereas resolutions, goals and dream lists are specific destinations where you have decided to reach. Sometimes, where you thought you wanted to go turns out to be the wrong place for you. As the Indian mythologist, medical doctor and business management expert, Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik elucidates in his TED Talk, our destinations are heavily coloured by our social conditioning and our myths.
Our purpose here is not to become the best version of ourselves. It is to grow into the most authentic version of ourselves. “Best” is overrated, pursue “truest”, instead.
The Practice of Intention
Here are some ways to start 2021 with intention:
1. Adaptability
The ultimate reality that 2020 made us face was that plans are just that, plans. Fixating on plans is not a viable strategy for living. If there was a single message for us last year, it was to stay adaptable.
Be agile, be flexible and accept the present reality, unconditionally.
January 1st, 2021 is not magically different than new year’s eve, is it? And that is alright. Going with the flow is still our best bet in the new year.
2. Simon Says
So, remember that list of new year resolutions you made for 2021? If you did not take my advice and did not tear it up, take a close look at them. Let us reverse engineer these goals and try to find your intentions which drive them.
Simon Sinek woke us up to the profound insight; we are driven by our “whys”, and we must find them before we can achieve the “what”.
Do what Simon says. Find your “why”.
And the “why”, is the intention that created each new year resolution on your list. You may be surprised to find a common intention underlying several of them!
3. Don’t live up to expectations; live into possibilities.
Now stay true to these intentions you just uncovered, throughout the year. And tear up that list of goals.
Not because you won’t achieve them, but the worry is you might achieve them instead of a much greater possibility you are capable of.
Intentions allow you to live into possibility, infinite possibility. Instead of living the life of your dreams, why not lie beyond your wildest dreams this year?
Goals, because of their specific nature, put a ceiling on the outcome you can achieve. Even if you set goals which are audacious and far beyond your current reach and almost unreasonable, they are still bounded by the limits of your imagination. Gently shepherded by our intentions, we may be able to live beyond such limits.
This year, let us colour beyond the lines, shall we?
In a nutshell, goal setting is a starting point for many people, and manifestation techniques are useful for developing a laser-sharp focus. But once you’ve experienced their power, and their limitations too, it is time to transcend.
This year, I am setting intentions for the new year, instead of goals, dreams or resolutions. Michael Singer says that his 40-year long surrender experiment , where he surrendered his personal will and allowed himself to go with the flow of life, took him on a journey into life’s perfection. I wish myself and every one of you an intentional journey into life’s beauty, whether perfect or not.
Ready to jump onboard?
