The Only Three Resolutions You Really Need In 2018
By Soumya John
If like me, you began the year hoping to find the perfect resolution, you know how confusing that can be.
I considered the usual list of eating healthy-working out-meditating, just as did you. But something within me was certain that those were not it.
Those, and most resolutions that come to us easy, focus on fixing or attaining something. But all I wanted to do was soak in every bit of what was around me. I wanted to move organically, sometimes forward, and sometimes from side to side, swaying in the summer breeze of life.
So I came up with three resolutions that worked for me, and if you choose them too, remember to wake up every day and resolve to them again.
1. Live In The Present Moment
“Forever is composed of nows.” ― Emily Dickinson
If you are asked to look back at the life you’ve lived so far and pick the days when you were happiest, which ones will you pick?
You probably will not pick the ones people most expect you to. You will pick the ones when you felt most alive. When you felt like you inhabited the entire day, living, breathing and becoming every moment.
Happiness cannot be a constant state of being. But it works as a powerful indicator while considering how you would like to create your best life—it starts with living in the moment you are in.
I’ve lost many moments with one foot sinking in the memory of the past and the other lost in a haze of the future, because pining and worrying are easy. They come with no effort and carry with them the infinite potential to destroy anything good that could come of what’s before you.
Let’s not let them.
The magic of the present moment is that it is impervious to worry, regret and envy because it does not know how to look elsewhere. And while working with it, you will be too.
What is before you may not always be the most alluring or promising moment, but it’s all you’ve got. Open yourself to it endlessly and allow it to direct you to the next.
Remember that the most extraordinary things in life—love that you fall into, friendships that cradle your soul and art that you master—are all a bunch of ordinary moments strung together. Life blossoms over several average days that you can only understand in retrospect.
2. Be Your Authentic Self
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” — Carl Jung
There’s a voice inside you that knows you better than anyone else in the world does. It’s guided you through every heartbreak, bout of sorrow, and hurricane of grief towards your most raw, unique and happy moments.
That’s the voice to hold on to if you want to find your authentic self. If you haven’t paid much attention to it yet, listen close.
It’ll tell you who you are when the world places a mould before you into which you don’t fit. It’ll tell you what you want to say when the world tries pushing an opinion onto you which you don’t agree with.
It’ll tell you what you believe in because of what you have experienced to be true, and not because the world tells you something is true. It’ll tell you what choice to make when the world pretends you have no choice.
Your authentic self will be alright with the words, thoughts, and feelings that come to you in a moment. It will not hinder you from speaking your truth, processing experiences the only way you can or feeling any emotion that comes to you.
To truly feel or experience anything, your complete, most real self needs to be present. Shed all the other layers and give yourself the liberation to be as you are and become who you are becoming.
3. Laugh Once A Day
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” — Mark Twain
As you move through the day, fleeting thoughts leave behind feelings of apathy, confusion, anxiousness, and sadness in you. There are emotions within from thoughts you were not able to think through or thought through to the point of saturation.
Laughter cleanses you. So laugh loudly and fully and flush out every block with its force. It can thunder upon every sense of yours, even if only for a few moments, and conquer you.
Give yourself this gift each day—laughter that is conceived in your soul and bursts into your body pushing past your human barriers and erupting within you in the purest, most unadulterated language of joy.
I wish that the rumble of your laughter, the strength of your authentic self and the power of the present moment bring to you a year incomparable and magical with every day that it unfolds.