Becoming better people
(resolutions and guilt)

Around 31st December or early in January many of us sternly resolve to be better people. And so begins another year dogged by niggling anxiety, guilt or a sense of failure.

Flag away your New Year resolutions, especially if there's the slightest possibility you're someone driven by the need for perfection.

Two aspects of the human condition often combine (especially at the traditional pseudo-performance appraisal we do of ourselves at New Year) to create a good deal of unnecessary and unhealthy stress:

1. A tendency to judge ourselves harshly against imagined and unattainable criteria of perfection.
2. An inability to be anything other than human beings with humanity's warts-and-all imperfection.

Guilt about not being better people, not good enough or about doing enough, (like guilt about anything else) is anger turned inwards and as with anger directed elsewhere, fails to make anyone better people. Its only certain outcome is our feeling bad about ourselves. People who feel bad about themselves are generally not constructive or pleasant to be around.

Practice self-acceptance and set themes, instead.

Learn to accept yourself and to let go

Learning to accept ourselves exactly as we are is the practice of self-kindness and self-forgiveness (letting go of complaints and grudges we hold against and about ourselves). This practice in turn makes it easier to let go of grudges we hold against others and to be kind elsewhere. It also tends to lift self-esteem, which is both (a) nice for others to be around and (b) a pretty good place from which to plan changes in our lives.

Grudge-holding is like eating rat poison in order to kill rats, author Pema Chödrön reminds us: painful to experience, painful for others to be around and ineffective. Holding grudges is also one way to feed any tendencies we may have towards despondency, despair, desperation or depression - because holding grudges never achieves anything that is constructive.

When we forgive, we let go. When we let go it is gone. Some issues we have with other and with ourselves cannot be resolved in any other way. Learn to more often "let go and lighten up". This does not mean giving other people emotional gifts we cannot yet afford to give; there are some things we must confront and deal with if we cannot forgive. Letting-go is different from swallowing-down and storing-up poisonous negativity. Trying to forgive someone or ourselves when we are not ready to let go of the grudge is like saying, "Alright, wheel the guilty bastard in, so that I can forgive him!"

Set themes, not resolutions

Setting "themes" for development and change may bring more success than setting resolutions. Each year I try to set three of them, sometimes including one from the previous year. It's rather like setting key principles for the development of organisational culture, in this case my own personal organisation. This year I've chosen Exuberance, Simplicity and Responsibility, for reasons which arose during my December reflection about the year I had just experienced. I want more of each of these qualities in my life. I want to hold my focus on these three words because I believe that thought and focus are creative: we tend to attract what we focus on and think about.

Of course, the themes produce no change whatsoever unless I also plan some useful activity to support them. But rather than break these down into broad goals, specific objectives, targets, priorities and desired outcomes (with accompanying documentation and progress review points - oh dear!), I simply plan ways of holding these themes in my consciousness every day - or at least two or three times a week.

As part of my plan I've already begun a useful book about exuberance and subscribed to a magazine whose themes include simplicity. I am just finishing Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" which is (to a large degree) about responsibility. I've opened a (private) Web log (blog) on these themes, for others to discuss and raise ideas for support. Each time I re-visit my (business) strategic plan this year, I'll re-visit these themes and reflect on my progress. My themes are written in prominent places in my diary and organiser systems. I'm not taking an absolutely methodical approach, but I'm not being entirely improvisational, either. It's not a perfect system (and who cares?) but it does avoid or reduce my in-grained tendency to beat myself up for "not being the person I should be".

Select and contact a Mentor if you'd like to discuss these ideas or want support to make progress with your own issues.

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