New Year's Resolutions (and the emotions that help you achieve them)
During my Emotion Integration show on Thursday, we discussed New Year's Resolutions. This is a topic that a lot of people have advice on. Googling "how to set New Year's Resolutions" will return a slew of links to tricks and ideas on how to make this year different.
Most people I know don't even bother with making resolutions. Some folks who really want to make lasting changes in their life start out with the best of intentions, but you know the drill - they end up overwhelmed, discouraged, and depressed by the 2nd week of January. Maybe you are one of these people.
In all the search results google may give, I bet you will not find the advice that I am about to share with you on how to succeed at your resolutions: Channel the wisdom and energy of your emotions.
A resolution will not succeed with intellect alone!
To be sure, if you do not know how to work well with your emotions - or understand the messages and wisdom that they bring to you - you will be at a severe disadvantage when making lasting changes in your life.
Here are 5 emotions that are crucial to the success of resolutions:
ANXIETY Now, when most people hear the word anxiety they think of something like a panic attack - heart racing, palms sweating, overwhelm, and lack of ability to do much of anything productive. That's not the kind of anxiety I am talking about. In DEI, anxiety is one of the 17 emotions, and (as with all emotions) - when it is at its healthy, free-flowing level - it brings you important gifts and skills.
Anxiety is the emotion that gives you the energy and focus you need to: make goals, organize, strategize, motivate, and stay on task to achieve your goals. Anxiety is what steers you back from procrastination - as long as you learn to engage with it, and when you're feeling anxious, ask yourself - "what really needs to get done?".
SADNESS A lot of New Year's resolutions have to do with letting things go, and that is right in sadness's wheelhouse. Sadness is the very emotion that helps you let go of things. If there are relationships that just aren't working, or belief systems, ideas, habits - the power of sadness will help you move on. You might be uncomfortable welcoming sadness into your life, but when there are things that aren't working anyway - it's those things that are the real problem. Sadness comes as gentle waves, to help you wash those broken things out of your life.
CONTENTMENT I would argue that this is one of the most important emotions to consider when working on your resolutions. Contentment, as we define it in DEI, might be better described as satisfaction or pride. Contentment arises when you succeed at goals, or when you are living up to your ideals and working towards being the person you want to be. It's that burst of feel-good I got this energy - and without that, you will have a very hard time sticking to any goal. Contentment works in partnership with Shame to keep you on the path to success!
SHAME This emotion is highly misunderstood because there are two types. One type of Shame comes from external sources (toxic or inauthentic) and the other kind comes from your deepest self (authentic). Your authentic Shame is the emotion that arises to nudge you to go to they gym or study for that test, or steers you away from eating that extra cookie or making that snarky comment to your mother. The key is to tune in to your authentic Shame, and don't let it overpower your Contentment. Let these two emotions work together to keep you on the path, and allow you to feel good about your journey to reach your goals.
ANGER This emotion is also misunderstood, because it has nothing to do with violence or fighting. Anger is about boundaries, and about being able to separate and distinguish between what belongs to you, and what belongs to other people. Anger is the emotion that helps you set boundaries, helps you define who you are and remember what is important to you. It also is crucial in helping you avoid enmeshment or the blurring between what you want for yourself and what others want for you.
This is just a quick run-through, of course. If you'd like more information on how to use these emotions to help you achieve your goals, let me know! Check out some of my past posts (listed below) for DEI mindfulness skills that can help as well.
Happy New Year!
May the Wisdom of Your Emotions Guide You to Success!!
Here is the split-out segment from Thursday's show if you'd like to listen:
Episodes with links to empathic mindfulness skills
Thanks for visiting!
Logo courtesy of @theDGT For posts on emotions, nature, poetry, and scotch,
come follow my blog!
come follow my blog!
I've been feeling sad and couldn't put it into words as to why, but after reading your post it makes so much sense. I want to let go of the people, the activities, and of the stuff that didn't work. It's amazing how i feel encouraged by the sadness now that i understand it. Thank you!
Haha! You're welcome! <3
May you be happy the whole year through. Happy New Year! @uniwhisp
Thank you!
Thanks for this, Uni. I think it's easy for us to go to either extreme: allowing ourselves to feel right in indulging in destructive levels of some emotions, or not giving ourselves permission to feel even healthy levels.
I think many of us growing up in "traditional" parenting households experienced the repression of 'negative' emotions. As a child expressing any anger or displeasure or really anything other than happiness and gratitude was heavily discouraged. That makes it difficult going forward to know what are healthy and acceptable levels of those emotions. Or rather what are healthy expressions of them.
You're doing a great service by sharing this kind of wisdom with the community, thank you!
You're right, @jrhughes. So many of us were not allowed to feel so many of our natural and necessary emotions; understanding all the different gifts and messages that the emotions bring us has been very eye-opening - it explains a lot of the problems society has to deal with!
Every single one of these hits home for me.
This:
Anger is the emotion that helps you set boundaries, helps you define who you are and remember what is important to you... helping you avoid enmeshment or the blurring between what you want for yourself and what others want for you.
Yes! When I first learned about this work, Anger was the one that blew my mind the most. It all clicked into place when I realized what anger was for and how it worked. Thanks for reading, Carol!
You are amazing! It's so heartwarming to find a person who is has gained a lot of insights on emotional quotient. The depth of your understanding is something I aspire.
Lately I have been depressed (not clinically but the feeling which is constant sadness). I learned to get through it with meditation and i have learned to understand my thoughts.im a catholic not buddhist so that comes of as something like heresy for my church and my catholic support system.
However, I noted that it was really great experience and gained this as a maxim i came up on my own: Sadness creates Substance. I learned that the hard way but it feels so good to realize that sadness is a great part of life wch makes life easier to deal. Really looking forward to your posts. I will be posting some of my posts about emotional intelligence soon. I will let you check it out and would love your insights.
Sorry for my intrusion. Just really appreciate your work and the positivity it could have on me. See you around
Good post. I enjoyed reading this. I stopped making new years resolutions years ago because I never like being attached to outcomes. I just know this year is going to be a good year :)
Awesome! Thanks for reading - and Happy New Year!
Happy new year for you to 🎉🎉🎉❤️❤️❤️🌃❤️🌃❤️🎉🎉
Dude, that's scary!