Ten Ways of Looking at a Resolution

And a link to the Vision 23 recording.

On this eve of a Gregorian new year, let me wish you abundant love, health, and happiness. We tend to make judgements on the quality of the year gone by and hope the coming one is better. I believe, however, that a year is a year; it is only a container. It always comes with good and bad, and who can say if one outweighs the other? Even during the pandemic, when there was enough heartbreak to sink fleets, there was also inordinate goodness.

Yet I love to mark the dropping of the peach. It gives me a chance to examine with vigorous interest the feel of my life. Is it going the way I want? How wide is the gulf between what I imagine my life to be and what it really is? In what area is there no gulf at all? Am I sticking to my beliefs and values, or have I allowed myself to be pulled from my path?

Every year we Americans engage in a grand debate over New Year resolutions. We hear that only 5-6% get accomplished, that people abandon them within days, that they don’t work, that they are patriarchal.

Name a better time to reevaluate how you are doing.

I hope you don’t let rhetoric get in the way of a bit of introspection and soul-searching, with you imagining what your life could be and figuring out how to bring that to fruition. I hope you don’t let forethought of failure keep you from getting clear.

I don’t believe it matters what you think about goal-setting or what you call these resolutions. This is about your life, about your desires, about the work you were put on earth to do. Period.

The great Western writer Bill Kittredge wrote, “We lose much of what could have been ours because we don’t pay good attention while we invent the future.” And my friend the writer Joni Tevis said, of another person, “They had a place at the table and they took it.” Resolutions are about deciding how to actualize ourselves. They are an exercise in self-determination and self-trust. (I heard Fleet Maul say that.) They are about taking our place at the table.

The poet Rilke said many astounding things, but one thing I quote endlessly is this: “There is an ancient enmity between daily life and the great work. Help me in saying it to understand it.” Daily life will pull you from the great work, every time. Most of daily life has us forget what could be ours if we took our place at the table.

Resolutions are a way to think about the great work and not let it get beaten down by daily life. This is especially true for women, for people of color, for immigrants, for teenagers—it’s extremely true for working-class and poor people of all colors and ages and sexes—because these people are asked to do more of the maintenance of life. Of course it happens also to straight, white men over 21.

My friend Rev. Antwon Nixon talks about dreams another way. He says there’s the life you envision and then there’s the life of the opinion of others. One rules over the other, and if you’re not careful—very careful—the opinion of others can overrule the life you envision. Antwon calls these things borders. “I’m not defined by those borders,” he says.

We are all put on earth for a purpose. As Antwon also says, “Bigness or smallness is not the issue. Alignment is the issue.” Align with your purpose.

I have 10 pieces of advice for you on New Year’s Eve.

1. Crazily set crazy-high goals.

2. Revisit your goals daily. Jose Trujillo, a painter with big dreams who Raven follows on social media, rewrites his dream every morning. Early in the morning, remind yourself of the vision you have, who you want to be. Think about what you want to do with the day. My morning routine involves gratitude for what I have; it involves meditation or prayer; and it involves getting clear, each morning, on what I was put on earth to do. It also includes me making a to-do list.

3. At the end of the day, you are the recipient of what you did with the day. You live with the consequences. Acknowledge the things that you’re proud of. I got this idea from Fleet Maul—at night, ask yourself: What’s something I want to thank myself for today?

4. Bust out and start generating more of whatever it is you need—energy/awakeness/belief in yourself/ words/ stories/ ideas/ time/ money.

5. Make smart decisions with your energy/awakeness/belief in yourself/ words/ stories/ ideas/ time/ money. What is a smart decision? It’s the thing on the list that moves you the farthest the fastest. My writing mentor, Bill Kittredge, said to me, “A poem won’t change your life.

   A short story won’t change your life.

   A book will change your life.”

   I wrote Ecology of a Cracker Childhood in the summer between my first and second years of graduate school simply because Kittredge told me to skip the small stuff. Do the book. The poem is easier. The poem gives you a dopamine rush (neurotransmitter, pleasure chemical, feeling of reward). But permanent, profound, lasting change comes about with the big dream.

6. This is very important—Visualize yourself where you want to be. Get the feeling of being there. Make it feel real. Visualize what you’ll be wearing, who will be there with you, what people will be saying. Bonnie Raitt won a big Grammy award for her breakthrough rock album, Nick of Time. Bonnie confessed later that she imagined herself at the Grammys. She even imagined what her dress would look like. (I learned this from Gay Hendricks’s book The Big Leap.) “Live in your imagination,” Antwon says.

7. Some of us have to change bad habits. One thing that helped Bonnie Raitt, for example, was that she had to stop drinking. Habits that are hard to change are hooked with suffering. These habits (like smoking or overeating or thinking of the negative first) rewarded you in a way that’s connected to trauma, stress, or pain. To change these habits is going to take a lot of willpower. Fleet Maul has some help on this front. He says that willpower, minute by minute in a day, is “the ability to make your choices consistent with your big goals and values.” The way to undo a negative habit with deep compassion for yourself and lots of self-care. You have to break the negative response with a positive response. Instead of a cigarette, for example, train yourself to take a short walk. We all should remember that self-care is different for different people—a long walk, a run in the woods, a salts bath, yoga, meditation, time in your woodshop, gardening, skiing, photographing. Think about the things that make you feel better, that improve your health. When you find yourself beaten up by your old habits and beliefs, do something you love. Put yourself in a positive position. Love yourself.

8. Take your dream and offer it up to the benefit of others. There’s so much medicine around your dreams. Who will your dream benefit?

9. You have more time than you realize. As the self-help author Gay Hendricks says, You make time. Or you don’t make time. You are the source of time. Go make yourself some.

10. Last, all that you need to know dwells inside your own body and your own heart already. You have to remember it, find it, uncover it, accept it. It’s there.

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Vision 2023 is Available

On Thursday evening I led a zoom session where we worked on goals for the new year. I wasn’t able to record it, so this morning I did. YouTube seemed to be the best place to upload it, so that anyone could access it. Here’s the link if you’re interested in Vision 2023. Get your journal out and sharpen a few pencils. It lasts an hour.

While folks were doing a free-write, I sneaked a screenshot. Aren’t people beautiful?

(I can’t be certain, but I see only 2 men on this first page of participants. I see Raven and I see Antwon. The rest are women. If this page is indicative of all the pages, then please analyze and interpret those demographics. Do men not set resolutions? Do they set them some other way? Do they not want to be guided by a woman? Do they believe in themselves less than most women do? What is going on? I need to know, because this trend carries over into my writing courses, which are 80 percent populated by women. I love men. I want them to be fulfilled and to see their dreams come true. I want them to write well. Where are they?)

May the new year bring you many happy returns.