A focus on awareness, acceptance, adjustment, according to the yogic model
By: Deborah Metzger
People have been making and breaking New Year’s resolutions for thousands of years. Improvements in health are perennial favorites: losing weight, quitting smoking, exercising more and taking time for relaxation are likely to top many lists.
Unfortunately, research and surveys show that a small minority of resolutions last even one month. The problem is not in the resolutions themselves, but in our mindsets as we make them.
According to yogic principles, most people make three serious errors as they set their resolutions. First, they judge themselves harshly. This leads to the second error, choosing unattainable goals. They magnify the gap between where they are and where they want to be. That causes the third error, thinking that the only way they can climb such a tall mountain is by beating themselves up until they reach the top.
This combination of errors sets up a spiral of failure. The minute you start with negative judgments, you lose the ability to make positive changes.
For example, a woman who attends yoga class to "fix" her stress-related problems may actually spend the class berating herself for not attending every day. "This feels so good,’ she says to herself. ‘Why do I only go once a week?" She has just given herself a negative message for doing something positive for herself. Why would she want to keep repeating that experience?
When judgment leads to unattainable goals, the first misstep can spell the end of the resolution. If someone who loves ice cream vows to stop eating ice cream altogether, that’s just not reasonable. So the minute they have a single spoonful, they just give up and say, "Hey, why not eat the whole half gallon?"
When resolutions can be kept only by discipline and fear of self-inflicted punishment, they are not sustainable. In the end, we do only the things that give us pleasure or help us avoid pain. If we think of the change we want to make as essentially negative, as requiring us to give up something we love, then we’re fighting against ourselves. Our old habits will prevail.
The yogic model of personal change, by contrast, consists of three simple decisions: awareness, acceptance and adjustment.
Awareness, as opposed to judgment, means knowing where you are right now. If you want to follow a map to get to a destination, the first thing you need to figure out is where you are on the map. It’s not to beat yourself up, but simply to allow you to make good decisions.
Acceptance means acknowledging your situation without wishing it were different. Once you accept reality, and stop fighting against it, you can make a conscious decision to try something new. Often, non-judgmental awareness all by itself causes a shift, or adjustment the change feels natural and effortless.
With this mindset, there can be no failure, only more information to help make better adjustments in the future. But we often prefer numbness to awareness. We run around and keep busy rather than quiet our minds and pay attention to our inner needs and wisdom. Awareness is the key to the successful change.
Deborah Metzger is the founder and director of the Princeton Center for Yoga and Health, located at the Montgomery Professional Center, 50 Vreeland Drive, Suite 506, Montgomery. PCYH is offering a week of free classes, including beginner’s classes and chair yoga, from Jan. 2 through 8. No special clothing or equipment is needed. For a complete schedule or directions to the center, visit www.princetonyoga.com or call (609) 924-7294.

