Isn’t it amazing how the best experiences often remind you of what’s wrong?
As I sat there digesting Christmas dinner— which was a Florentine steak inspired from our visit to DaVinci’s stomping grounds in Italy last summer—I realized something amazing, and dreadful: I needed to loosen the top button on my pants. Actually, I needed to just change into my pajamas.
As much as I’d like to blame that sudden experience of overt indulgence on one meal, the truth is that it has taken many, MANY meals to expand my waistline. I love food. Especially good food. And it’s been a good year.
So I changed into my flannel pajama pants. That felt better. I was about to go back downstairs to the fire and perhaps another glass of something delightful, and I made a mistake: I looked in the mirror. That started off the little voice in my head: “If I pull my shirt down just right, I sorta look slim. Well, I don’t look AS fat. Shit.”
My little voice is insidious. It kept going…
” I remembered, “It’s almost New Year’s! I’ll just make a resolution…”
I remembered, “It’s almost New Year’s! I’ll just make a resolution to lose the weight, get a gym membership (again), and I’ll do it! THIS is the year for success! I’ll resolve to make a bit more cash, too, and to be a better husband. My wife deserves that. I can be grumpy. And scatterbrained. And messy. I really need to clean out the garage.
Shit.”
It knows me, that little voice in my head. I can count on it to cause trouble.
I began to ponder how I could actually fulfill on what I say I want. Especially after years of proven experience in failing at my resolutions. Something was missing here that I wasn’t seeing. Life always seems too busy to add anything else in for me. But other people seem to be able to do it. They find the time. They make the changes. They annoy me.
What do they have that I don’t? Can you relate?
Is this true for you, too, that the best experiences often remind you of what’s wrong? But knowing that never seems to make a difference?
That has been my story for many a January, until this year. I’ve discovered something—a process—that is fantastic at removing the blocks that naturally seem to come between me and my resolutions. I feel free to finally make some real changes. In my health, my business, and even in my relationships. And while I don’t expect everything to change over night (No, I don’t have a Matrix-like red pill for you), I am making progress on all fronts.
The process helps you create the space in your life that you need to make resolutions that work.
Notice that I said space, not time. Yeah, that surprised me, too.
Let me explain.
You ever wake up and have a clear intention to do something? You just wake up inspired?
Finally, you are going to complete that project. For me, finalizing my year end books is a good example. I’m gonna do it. It should only take about 5-6 hours of focused effort, and I’ll be done. I head down to my office. On the way, I grab a coffee. There is a picture in the kitchen I’ve been meaning to hang on the wall. I remember I need to do that. There is a book I bought that I want to read on the table under some bills. I’d still like to read it. Someday. An earthenware bowl is on the table, too. My brother made it for us, and I haven’t talked to him in while. I should call him.
I grab my coffee, and… I forgot what I was doing. All those little incompletions are pulling at me, clouding my mind, splintering my purpose to the point that it takes me a full cup of coffee to remember what I was so inspired about just a few minutes ago.
Here is the secret of the resolution sauce:
you are so full with all the unfinished ideas, projects, and someday/maybe dreams that you have no room to create anything new.
All the unfinished ideas, the incomplete projects, and the vague, someday/maybe To-Do’s are still pulling on you. They drain your energy, cloud your focus, and keep you from making any significant change in your life. This makes sense, too. Each time you don’t complete a project, especially if it’s something you keep telling yourself you really want to do, you reinforce the subconscious belief that you won’t actually do it. No matter how good it might be for you.
The more incompletions you have in your life, the stronger your belief is that you will never finish what you start. It actually becomes an inner knowing. It’s a lie, but you still know it to be true. In your world, it is true.
If you tell the truth, a snowball would have a better chance of surviving Hell than your resolution to get into your skinny jeans has of being fulfilled. Believe me, I know.
So what do you do?
You can’t complete everything on your list by New Years, so are you just screwed? Yep. Probably better if you just have a little bit more pie. Yeah… that sounds good.
NOOOO!
There IS a way to complete EVERYTHING on your subconscious To-Do list, from cleaning out the closet, to calling that distant relative. It takes about 15-45 minutes, and it will be time well spent if you really DO want to make some changes in your life.
I’m going to tell you exactly how to do it, and I even have a checklist to make it super easy, but first, let me tell you what happened when I did this exercise myself.
Over the holidays, I started thinking about the upcoming year. I knew there were some changes I wanted to make, but I felt miserable about doing any of the work I needed to do. When I feel miserable, its because I’ve gotten myself out of alignment. I know I need to reconnect with myself. It’s usually a sign that something new is coming for me, too.
My practice when this happens is to Connect with Spirit. That’s what I help clients do as a healer. When I Connect with Spirit, I get clear about what I’ve done to myself to get in the mess I’m dealing with. I also get clear about what to do to move through it.
Spirit is the ultimate partner. It is you in a higher form. Like a future self that has already screwed up all the things you are screwing up right now, but has figured it out, moved through it, and come out amazingly well on the other side.
Spirit knows the territory. It knows you. If you don’t believe in the ethereal, then think of Spirit as an aspect of your own consciousness where your inner genius lives. It’s much smarter than you. That’s a good thing.
So, as I sat down to Connect with Spirit, I could feel that the reason I was miserable was because I really did want to make some changes, but I just didn’t have any hope of being able to do it. I asked myself why that was.
Here is what I heard:
You have too much on your plate already. You have no room for anything new because you are already full.
What? I was confused. I was at the end of my year. The holidays were here. I had almost nothing to do. I had checked out a whole series of fiction novels to read over the holidays because we had just finished our latest Netflix binge. That’s almost desperate for something to do. What did this mean, I asked:
You have too much on your plate already.
But I didn’t. Having done this for years though, I remembered that part of the process of Connecting with Spirit is to trust that the answer you get actually could be right.
So I continued to listen within. Sometimes that looks a lot like arguing with myself. But then, when I let go of the “truth” that I had nothing but time, I heard:
Yes, you have time, but you do not have space.
That’s when things opened up for me. In my mind’s eye, I could see the space around me, the area where my biofield, or aura, is located. It extends out about 3 feet around my physical body, and I could sense all sorts of little “floaties” in it. The “floaties” are like little clouds, some goey, some fluffy, with little sparks inside of them. The sparks are were the brilliant ideas I had begun to act on, and the clouds and goo were the residual emotions that had come up when I tried to fulfill them, and failed.
My personal space was full of incompletions.
I then remembered something I had learned a long time ago: the power of declaration. It is possible to declare something complete. You actually do this more often than you think. Ever get sucked into Facebook, and then suddenly realize that you have to be somewhere, or actually DO something? You say to yourself, “I don’t have time for this right now. I have stuff to do! I’m done”, and you go about your business. You declare that you are done, and then you take some action to demonstrate it: you close the computer or shut down the app.
Declaration and Demonstration are the tools you use to clear out the clutter in your personal space.
This really works, too. Especially in the hidden spaces in your life.
Here is what I did:
1. I made a list of all the things that I had wanted to do, had started but not finished, had thought about doing, had talked to someone about doing, and especially the things that I had said I would do but did not do. The list was two full columns on one page of white paper. I wrote it out with a pen. Handwritten, not typed. That’s important.
2. I declared them done. I said,
At this moment, I am choosing to NOT take anymore action towards fulfilling these ideas. I declare them complete, and ask that they return to their source, so I can create the space in my life to do only what is for my highest good in alignment with my highest purpose here.”
3. Then I signed it, tore up the paper, put it on the grill, and burned it.
Afterwards, I felt something I had not expected: I felt absolutely neutral.
I had no worries. I had no concerns. I also had no inspiration. That was odd because I’m usually excited about something. I decided to just go with it, but I did check in with Spirit again.
Here’s what I heard:
When you make space in your life, you experience just that: space. You aren’t used to that because you fill you life with unfinished things. Once you have real space in your life, you can begin to fill it with things you really want to do. Things that bring you alive. Things you were born to do.
This requires making conscious choices, and then being responsible for them.
Amazingly, over the last few days, deeply authentic and personal desires have started to bubble up out of my psyche. Not mere To-Do list items like cleaning out the garage, but new ways of living. The purpose underlying many previously held “good ideas” is becoming clear.
I realize now that why I chose to be a healer. I want to make a lasting difference while I’m here, and the one way I know to do that is to contribute to integrity, kindness, loving, and truth. Healing encapsulates all that for me. I actually do the work on myself that I help others do. I love doing it, too. It brings out the best in me, and others. That insight has renewed my purpose in my own personal spiritual practice, and has deepened my commitment to you.
I also realized that I still want to improve my health, but not just so my jeans fit better. Heck, I could buy bigger jeans. I want to improve my health because I love how I feel when I’m fit. I love being able to hike 14’ers and breathe rarified air. It’s just more fun to be more fit. It helps me grow and learn more effectively, too. Helps keep my mind sharp. I like that. Most importantly, improving my health is a way of honoring this gift of life. I’m clear that I’m here for a reason, and I want to honor that.
Now you might be saying, “Well, I know why I want to do these things, I just can’t seem to do them.” I thought I knew, too.
I had even had similar thoughts before. But they were not real for me. Those reasons were just good ideas. Why? Because I had no space for them to begin to go to work on me.
And that’s my biggest take away from this whole process: the ideas you think are yours—they are never what you expect them to be.
They arise from something much bigger than you know yourself to be. They not only serve you, but they also inspire those around you. They change you from the inside out in ways you cannot know beforehand. These ideas breathe new life into you when you have the space to actually fulfill them. That’s what you really want from your Resolutions. You want to feel alive again.
That’s why it’s called inspiration.
So, there it is. A simple process for completing all the crap that keeps you from making changes in your life. I hope you try it out. I’d love to know how it works for you, too. I’ve created a checklist of possible incompletions for you, too. Just click here and download it. Or, you can just sit and think back over your last year, or even your whole life.
Just because it’s New Year’s doesn’t mean you don’t have incompletions from earlier in your life. Write ‘em all down, declare them done, and let them go. All of them, even if you think you might want to actually do some of them. When you let them go in the way I described above, the stuff that is really for you will come back in a new form. And if anything is so important to you that you just can’t bring yourself to write it down on the Completion Checklist, then if you are telling the truth to yourself, you better make a commitment right now to do something about it, otherwise you will make yourself miserable.
Here’s to YOU, and your creating some new space in your life!
Space from which you can finally create something you will fulfill. Space that will allow you to commit to yourself in a new way.
Go grab a piece of paper or print out this checklist, and create the space you need to create a powerful new year. Do it today, or at least put a time in your calendar to do it. You’ll be glad you did, and you will have created the space to finally fulfill on the life of freedom you want.
Let me know in the comments what you noticed, or if you need help, share that, too, and I’ll get right back to you.
And if you got anything of value out of this post, please share it with someone that you think could really use some more space and freedom.
Blessings to you as you create the capacity for change, and Happy New Year!
Lynn Pender says
This is awesome Will. Thank you
Lynda says
I got it, I got it! Your fun way of expressing your own troubles and reactions and the methods you use to change inspire me to do the same.