Why Your New Year's Resolutions Don't Work

Come February 1st most of our resolutions have all but been abandoned. Why is this? Simply put it’s because where these resolutions are coming from aren’t genuine and are circumstantial, or filled with judgment. So… what does that mean? Let’s get into it. 

Most if not all New Year’s Resolutions come from motivation, and motivation comes from outside of our beingness. We feel something lacking within us, something missing or not good enough and then we see something externally that would seem to fill that void. Let’s take being overweight as an example. I’m overweight which means I won’t be liked, loved or accepted. I discovered an influencer on social media who has all the systems to get me to my ideal weight and I assume that will fill the lack I’m feeling. The sense that the weight loss will give me is the motivation. The projected outcome of being accepted and loved once the weight is gone is the motivation. 

Motivation is never sustainable, even if or when you reach your goal you find that the emptiness inside you doesn’t go away. Which will either make you look for a bigger carrot (goal) to follow or have you give up and be depressed. 

Take a second and consider some of your goals or resolutions. What is it they will give you? Go ahead and boil that down a little too. What does being fit, wealthy, popular, recognized, famous, etc give you? 

So what else is there then if motivation is doomed to fail or keep you constantly strung-along, never achieving the fulfillment you desire? Inspiration. 

In-spiration comes from with-in. It is born of what you love outside of your circumstances. In truth inspiration comes from the sense of already being whole and having a desire to share or create something from there. Having a love of a healthy, strong and functional body so that you can experience and create even more of what you love has a different feel to it. It isn’t originating from lack or judgment.  When inspiration arises in you the feeling of it calls for an action. That action may not even seem related to the feeling of being fit or healthy, but if you follow it you are on your own path to creating the inspiration that is moving through you. Most of us can’t follow this feeling because we don’t see modeling of these steps from others or because it doesn’t logically seem related to the inspiration it gets swept under the rug and disregarded as innate wisdom moving through you. 

You can get inspired by others. In this case the frequency or vibration of their beingness activates yours, what’s already alive and well within you, and you feel the resonance that they hold of being whole. They then inspire you to follow what it is that you feel inside of you that you desire to bring out into the world, by reminding you of who you are, in your essence. Following inspiration is for your own enjoyment, your own fulfillment. It isn’t motivated by what it is you’ll have at the end of it, but by the experience of it, in and of itself.  

Our social conditioning and cultural narrative doesn’t speak to true inspiration. It speaks of working harder and following rules and formulas to reach a standard we are fed. A standard that represents success and fulfillment. Of lots of money and perfect bodies. Take a second and consider what you define as success? Then once you have that definition let it fall away and sense into the present moment, what does true success, success just for you look like and how are those things different?