Via the Dali Lama.....

New year's resolutions? Easy to make, easy to break? By making new year's resolutions are we inevitably setting ourselves up for failure? Often, the simple answer is 'yes'!

Beginning Afresh

What is good about the dawn of a new year is that it gives us an incentive to 'start again', to discard the bad habits of the previous year and to begin afresh. We might resolve to meditate more assiduously, be more tolerant of others, to develop a greater to kindness in challenging situations, to resolve to follow the five precepts more consistently, to give more freely, and to be more focused on what is really important in life. But how do we stick to these promises to ourselves?

The Four Efforts

Grit and determination are no doubt necessary ingredients.

The effort to avoid is to avoid the 'arising of evil'. If unwholesome thoughts should start to enter the mind - thoughts of ill-will, for example - we can turn our attention away from them and not let them intrude. Like someone bent on trouble who knocks at your door, you keep the door shut. If such thoughts have taken hold of the mind, however, we can attempt to overcome them by dispelling them. A useful analogy is ejecting someone from your house bent on doing you harm.

The effort to develop wholesome states such as benevolence and kindness is like inviting a welcome friend to your house. The effort to maintain is to make these wholesome states habitual to one's mind, like asking the welcome guest to stay permanently.

Mindfulness

This is a useful framework for managing new year's resolutions. It's not just about giving things up, it's also about replacing bad habits and inclinations with good ones. This is not usually an easy process - it requires commitment and perseverance. It means being aware of our negative tendencies and, where possible, nipping them in the bud. A key technique in this is sati or mindfulness. This means being aware - even alert! - to our mental and physical processes. In this way, one can avoid knee-jerk reactions to our everyday experiences.

New year's resolutions are all about mental and physical health. It's about that wise voice within that knows what's best, urging us onward. But it is a voice we should learn to listen to all the time and not just at the turning of the year.