Resolve to Feel Good

Many people have made and are trying to keep their New Year’s Resolutions for 2017.

They are deciding who they want to be, what they want to look like, how much money they want to have, what health changes they want to make, what weight changes they want to make in their lives, and the list goes on and on.

If you take 100 people and ask them what their resolutions are, and there will be many similarities; such as things focused around health and weight, relationships, and money. But you, my friend, are different because, after reading this, your resolution is going to be completely different from what it was.

Here’s what I would like you to do going into this new year. Starting today and every day for the rest of your life, I want you to make a resolution. I don’t want you to make a New Year’s Resolution. I want you to make a Daily Life Resolution. This doesn’t mean pursuing long-term aims, like training in order to transform your body, should be discouraged. Simply be realistic about the time it is going to take and ensure you are mentally prepared for the challenges ahead.

I want you to resolve to feel good! Can you do that? Will you make up your mind right now? That’s what the word, “resolve,” means. The word, “resolution,” comes from the word, “resolve,” which simply means “to decide firmly on a course of action.” To decide so firmly that only the most significant of circumstances or events is going to sway you from this particular course of action.

Ultimately, what we want in any given moment is to feel good. What every human being on this planet at this split second wants is to feel good. So I want you to resolve to feel good.

Most people set resolutions, or goals, that are toxic. They are actually harmful to you! They’re harmful to your soul. They’re harmful to your psyche. They can be harmful to you physically. For example, we’ll set a goal and then we’ll get depressed because we either didn’t reach the goal or when we did reach the goal, it wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. That’s why goals are toxic.

Setting the wrong kind of goal is a toxic goal that leaves us feeling empty even when we reach it. For example, you might think that what you want is to be in an amazing, loving, supportive, encouraging relationship, but really you don’t. Your goal is focused on the wrong thing. You actually don’t want the relationship. The desired outcome is not really to have, be or do something. The real desire, at its core, is actually the feeling you think having it will produce. If I was to ask you, “Why do you want the relationship?” You might start to describe all the things you’d be able to do with the person, but what it really boils down to is that you want to feel something. You want to feel loved and appreciated and valued, and you want to feel an amazing connection with another person.

If you detach from the object you fixated on in your head, and focus instead on what it is that you want to feel, then that feeling can show up in many different ways. A different person could come into your life. Or, best of all, you could find yourself falling deeply in love with yourself in lots of different ways.

It’s important to understand that feelings are not dependent on the acquisition of things or the achievement of things outside of us. Feelings are generated by our thoughts in this present moment. So “feeling loved” is actually something you can do on your own by thinking thoughts that produce those kinds of feelings. Thinking about how valuable you are. Thinking about how valuable your contribution to the world is can fill you with an amazing sense of self-worth and self-esteem and self-value. It’s from this mindset that we can then go off and pursue the goals, knowing that at the core of every single goal is the desire to feel something.

Let’s set aside the physical outcome altogether and let’s make the feeling the goal. But be careful of wanting to feel things that require other people to be involved in it. So the desire to feel loved has to start with you loving yourself rather than placing a requirement on other people to express that. The problem most people have setting resolutions, or goals, is that they are based on things that are outside of themselves. Even if it’s a physical thing, that’s technically outside of you because, guess what, you are not your body! You are not! Your body is a physical thing, but YOU are spirit. YOU are soul. YOU are essence. YOU are energy. But YOU are NOT your body.

If the goals you have set are outside of your soul or outside of your body in any way, if they’re dependent on specific people behaving in specific ways, then that is a formula for disappointment.

Spend more time thinking thoughts, doing things and being with people that make you happy. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. And if we want to have a happy, fulfilling, meaningful, loving life, the majority of our days and the majority of our minutes must be filled with those thoughts.

Remember: What you really, really want is NOT the THING. We don’t necessarily want to have, be or do things. What we really desire is to feel feelings. Ultimately what we desire, is to feel good. So decide firmly on this course of action. Resolve to feel good!

I talk about this in more detail on this episode of my Life Is A Marathon podcast.

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