Last year before Tet, my partner Bao Anh and I put two whole days aside to enter into a deep reflection on what we wanted to accomplish together, and also as separate human beings in the new year. I had done this practice on my own, in previous years before the Western New Year, but never with Bao Anh before Tet. The reason for deliberately carving out such a long time of preparation for Tet was our understanding that New Year’s resolutions as a general rule fall apart very soon after the beginning of the New Year. In fact, there have been many research studies conducted on this practice of making New Year’s resolutions and it seems that only about 8% of New Year’s resolutions are ever successful in the long term. Why do you think this is?
I would invite you right now to recall your own experience over the years in regard to the making of New Year’s resolutions. Take a few minutes.
Photo by William Choquette: https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-on-treadmill-1954524/
So how successful were you at making and then keeping your new year’s resolutions? If the research is correct also for Vietnamese then about 8% of you are smiling and feeling right now a sense of deep satisfaction, but 92% of you are sadly shaking your heads and lamenting the fact that although you perhaps very enthusiastically entered into the process of coming up with resolutions, you were unable to follow through and a few weeks or months on from the beginning of the new year had either forgotten your resolutions; given up on them or were unable to make them a reality. Gym instructors have told me that there is always a huge influx of new members in January, but by February or March, there are very noticeably fewer new members working out regularly.
Because only about 8% of people are successful in implementing new year’s resolutions, some people have suggested that it is a stupid waste of time to even make resolutions, a practice that needlessly causes disappointment and that instead it would be wiser that everyone should on a daily basis just attempt to havefocussed, productive days. In some ways I agree with this approach, especially if you don’t have a good and comprehensive approach for planning and executing your New Year’s resolutions. If you don’t give sufficient thought and time to making new year’ resolutions they will inevitably fail and this can cause all sorts of negative feelings such as self-disappointment; hopelessness regarding the possibility of change and a feeling of being out of control and directionless to name but a few. So my partner and I put two days aside. You may not have the ‘luxury’ of that amount of time or the stamina but the point is you will more than likely be one of the 92% who fail to implement their New Year’s Resolutions if you don’t set aside some period of time of preparation. I will outline my approach below.
First Step: Meditation
The first step as you might imagine from reading my articles so far is to spend some time in meditation. Aside from meditation being one of the core practices of any effective person’s life, it is especially important to meditate before the new year’s planning process to clear your mind as much as possible of all the
useless thoughts, memories and feelings that cloud and obscure the present moment. If you immediately go into planning mode your ideas will most probably be warped by your anxieties and past regrets or experiences. Spend about 20 minutes in meditation. By doing this you are also connecting with your inner wisdom and creativity and if you are a person of some form of faith you are also connecting with that loving Presence within you that wants your new year to be rich and rewarding even more than you do.
Second Step: Discovering your Core Values
After meditating, you now transfer your focus to contemplation of your Core Values. What are core values? Core Values are the deepest guiding principles for your life - what you want to stand for; what you hope others see and appreciate about you. You know you have discovered a Core Value when you feel very excited or enthusiastic about some particular characteristic like, ‘Standing Up for the Truth’; The love of Family and Friends; The call of Adventure and Discovery.
Let me share with you my own story of how I discovered my own core values. When I was 30 years old I won a scholarship to study in Washington DC. One of my new friends in DC suggested that as well as studying it might be a good idea to try and find a ‘mentor’, someone whom I could regularly meet to share with him/her my DC journey. Someone suggested that he thought that a retired Episcopal priest he knew might be a good match for me and when I met him I immediately knew I had found my mentor. During my second meeting with him, he stopped for a second and peered at me very closely and asked me, “Matthew what do you really want to ‘get’ from your time here in DC?”. I knew he meant more than just doing well in my studies. His question stopped me in my tracks and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up as the answer came to me. I said,’ Pat I think that in the next two years, I want to pay attention to and nourish every important aspect of my being.’
He smiled at me with his old (he was 85 years old) twinkling eyes, got up from his chair where we were sitting together on his verandah and asked me to follow him. He walked to the centre of his living room, bent down, and picked up an iron ring attached to a chain. He lifted up the ring, pulling open a trap door. We climbed down the stairs into his basement which was a room half inside and outside the ground.. The room was quite dark as it was early morning, but as ‘luck’ would have it a ray of sunshine illuminated a collection of clay figures in a circle on his workbench. We walked over to his workbench and gazed down at this circle of figures.
At first I couldn’t really work out what the shapes were. We gazed at the figures for some time (it seemed the right thing to do!) and then he pointed at one of them and he said in a low whisper, ‘That figure is Sunday!” As I looked a bit closer I saw that Sunday was a standing human with his arms raised above his head and his head also tilted skywards. Pat then said, ‘On Sundays, I pay attention to my relationship with the Loving Creator of the Universe. So on Sundays I meditate and pray longer than I usually do, and maybe I read books about spirituality; I visit cathedrals and walk slowly around their spaces allowing my heart and soul fly to my loving Creator.’
He then pointed to the next figure and said, ‘That figure is Monday.’ Monday was a kneeling human figure bending over with his hands plunged into the earth. ‘Pat said on Sundays I pay attention to my relationship with Nature and the natural world (Pat was a celebrated environmentalist who wrote books about the beauty of the earth and our sacred responsibility to connect and care for it). On Mondays, I might
work in my herb and vegetable garden; take a trip into the woods of the National Park close to my home; read books about nature or write in my journal about my love for the created world.’
He then pointed to the next figure and said “That is Tuesday. Tuesday was a human figure sitting on a stool one hand reaching out to a canvas with a paintbrush. Pat said, ‘On Tuesday I pay attention to my love of the Arts. So on Tuesdays, I might paint or read books about a great artist or go to see a ballet performance or play in the evening. .’ The day I regularly met with Pat was on Tuesdays, and he said, ‘Today after meeting with you I am going downtown by train to the Washinton DC National Gallery of Art. I have chosen two paintings to sit with - one in the morning and one in the afternoon.’ With his sketch pad and packed lunch Pat was going to spend the whole day in front of only two paintings in an attempt to understand and be artistically and spiritually nourished by the two great modernist paintings he had chosen to gaze upon.
I won’t tell you about the other 4 core values, correspond to the remaining four days of the week. Suffice it to say that my mentor Pat had a weekly cycle of cultivating and nourishing 7 core values. I found this so inspiring that I too sat down and thought deeply about what were the most important values that I wanted to make part of my life. I too came up with 7, some of them similar to Pat's as he and I were of a similar temperament, but three of them were different corresponding to my unique personality and background.
So I invite you now to sit down and discover your own core values. Three to five core values are enough, seven being the outer limit - any more would spread your attention too thin, and also it is highly unlikely that you could find more than seven values that you believed in deeply.
So ask yourself the questions - ‘what activities bring me the most joy or what couldn’t I live without; what things/pursuits give my life meaning and purpose?’ I’m going to supply you with a short list of ‘loves’ which will be pointers to your core values:
love of adventure and travel;
love of relationships;
love of truth;
love of the natural world;
love of the Arts;
love of music
love of creativity;
love of physical fitness and physical activities;
love of peace;
love of silence and solitude;
love of knowledge;
love of mystery;
love of God;
love of justice;
love of playfulness;
love of freedom;
love of inventing;
love of creating a business
Next week I will cover Part 2 Choosing Value’s Infused Goals and Action Planning to Achieve Them. Until then, enjoy your week and thank you for reading.
