Mindfulness as your New Year's Resolution

by Michael Ruben LICSW

Many of us celebrate the New Year with a commitment to improve our habits.  Whether it’s to have a dry January, lose weight, take up a new hobby, join a gym, or be a better partner or parent, by Spring, we often forget these goals.

Some of this has to do with the difficulty of changing our behaviors and maintaining the initial energy and commitment to work on these goals.  We resist being told what to do, even by ourselves.  In other words, goals become mechanisms for our attachment and propensity to guilt ourselves and judge ourselves as a success or failure.

One goal for the New Year that seems worthy of consideration is becoming mindful. Is mindfulness consistent with your New Year’s resolution? The answer is maybe. Mindfulness is about being fully present in the moment.  This includes allowing our thoughts to come and go like the clouds without attaching to them.   When we are not mindful, we attach to our thoughts about either the past (often disappointments and things we wish we could change) or the future with worries and anxieties about what will occur.   None of us are very good at predicting the future and we certainly are unable to undue the past. These obsessive thoughts simply occupy our mind and keep us from being in the present moment. 

New Year’s resolutions represent our goals for the future.  And we often attach our success or failure in the New Year to our ability to reach these goals.  So here is an idea.  Why not make your New Year’s resolution to live mindfully in the present?  Focus on your breath, notice what is going on in your body, and attend to the moment as it unfolds.  Allow thoughts to flow into your mind and observe them rather than attaching to them. This may be the best New Year’s resolution you can make and the resulting changes in your mood, awareness and well-being will become self-evident and rewarding.