A New Year brings renewed hope and excitement — the perfect time to vision and make resolutions. However, statistics report that even during the best of times, generally, only 12% of resolutions result in success. Here we are living in unprecedented times. Covid and Climate changes coupled with our internal battles have complicated human experience beyond measure. Our nervous systems are overwhelmed and continuously dysregulated.

This blog talks about three wisdom strategies – Refined Compassionate Dance – to update our resolution ritual and increase the odds of fulfilling them.

# First – Refine your Resolutions List

Collectively we all are seeking authenticity, peace, and purpose. Our priorities have shifted. The first wisdom is to refine and reprioritize your resolutions. Anything that creates more work and does not improve the quality of our life has no business demanding we work for it. If your resolutions reflect your deepest aspirations that shape your destiny, you will likely stay the course. 

# Second – Dance with the Restraining Forces

Creation is a dance between the restraining and activating forces of life. The activating forces fuels our desires, imaginations, and our will to create. The restraining forces maintain the status quo by showing up as internal/external setbacks. Both the forces are proportional to the level of transformation your creation will bring to life. So, whether your resolution is about transforming your life, business, or society, expect the restraining forces to show up as unexpected challenges. The second wisdom is making emotional room for these forces, building strategies to work through them, creating back up plans, and getting the right kind of support. This will monumentally increase the odds of your success. 

# Third – Build Compassionate Resilience 

There is a certain charm about discipline and perfection when it comes to resolutions. Understandably, most of us do not make room to derail. Highs and Lows are inevitable parts of life. The third wisdom is to toss out perfections and rigid discipline. Compassionately plan for derailing. Protect your enthusiasm by intentionally embracing messiness, mistakes, detours, and breaks. Build your resilience by making room for love, fun, sickness, and all the ebbs and flows of life. Align your timeline with the realities of your life. 

This Refined Compassionate Dance will help you move forward even if the pace is slower at certain times. If you stay the course, a time will come when internally, things have shifted enough to take shape of excitement, consistency, and a firm belief in your success.

.A time comes in a seeker’s journey when life holds them upside down and shakes their everything – the world they knew, the relationships they found love with, and the work that gave them meaning. All identifications get shaky. Any attempt to hold onto anything that gives momentary relief is destroyed. And they are left with burning ashes of their raw and primal fear. There is nothing to lean onto except fear, loneliness, uncertainty, and longing.

Everything is dying and dissolving at the hands of some mysterious force that seems merciless and benevolent both. Even when one is in pain, regretful of ever dreaming of those lofty goals of awakening and begging to live a smaller life, a smaller dream, this force refuses to give up. Something new wants to birth that is liberated from all identities. With all the safety nets gone, there is nowhere else to go but within. This where we meet with that Divine Grace that has the power to birth something beautiful and lasting from our nothingness. 

The more we surrender to this space, the more we are filled with the sweet pleasure that comes from this mystical pain. It takes great courage to hang in this liminal space and rest in silence and non-doing. We are trained to take charge of our lives . To mold our thoughts into something good. These teachings of our world will play with our minds and challenge the real experiences and wisdom of our bodies. We might also find ways to numb our confusion and pain in some kind of excess. In comparison with others, our lives may feel wrong and lacking. All of that is human and understandable. But this process asks nothing less than our total and complete surrender. The wisdom here is to give in to our unique process of dying without rushing rebirthing.

The more we do that, the more we are surrounded by the energy of extraordinary Grace and Love amidst the immensity of the pain we feel. The rebirthing that comes from such a space cannot be rushed and will not be glossy or shiny for the world to see. In fact, it will be a slow and steady process of tapping into the solid foundation that lies in some deep unrealized aspects of our being. We will fall down and take 10 steps back with every step forward. In all these missteps, a time does come when we start feeling the beauty, knowing, and guiding light within. We start realizing that in spite of how painful it is we don’t want it any other way and somehow, we will make it. We stop looking outside for answers. We start being who we are.

Anyone who has been through such an intense awakening has my utmost respect. Each journey is unique so there is no universal wisdom. A few things that served me were that I felt my scary painful feelings as much as I could. The more I was ready to feel them the less scary they became. I also stopped explaining my life to anyone who was not me. It was my story, it was my process and it was my longing that life was answering in its own unique way. I started radically accepting my life, the whole story with all its ironies and beauties.

There were moments I felt intense gratitude that my heart has the courage for such a longing. Sometimes I felt the rush of excitement. How would that moment be, when I am awakened enough to find that which I have been longing for all my life tucked right inside of me. The moments when nothing worked, I cried my heart out and prayed. I leaned heavily on the Divine Mother and begged her to take me in her arms. Her soothing energy never failed me and that kept the flame of hope alive. The moments when I was so consumed with grief that I couldn’t even cry or pray was when Divine Grace literally descended down in some way to show me that I am not alone and refused to give up on me. 

In those moments, I knew that which I was seeking, was seeking me as well. And that somehow, we will find each other.