Re-Solve the Conundrum of Myself: A Re-Solution for the New Year

New Year’s resolutions. Start. Restart. Focus. Refocus. Set. Reset. Boot. Reboot. Charge. Recharge. Commit. Recommit. New. Renew. Renewal. Detox. Cleanse. Challenge. Promise.

These words comprise the language of the new year around health, wellness, weight loss, and self-improvement. These words energize and inspire me.

I love the idea of a fresh start, a new beginning, a way to change what causes me to act against my own self interests.

This is hopeful stuff — making myself better, being the person I want to be, improving myself without hating myself.

My hope is magnified this year because I have the privilege of hearing the hopeful possibilities that others have for themselves through Transform Shadows.

People have broad-ranging approaches and varying start dates. The collective force around self-improvement is powerful and widespread.

Some have specific New Year’s resolutions that start today. Others have long-term goals that have started or will start with small or large changes. Others have themes and no start dates at all.

Whatever the approach, the new year provides many of us with an opportunity to reflect on who we are, to visualize who we want to be, and to plan how we want to get there.

If you are one of those people who is using this moment to transform your shadows, I am cheering you on — whether I know you or not, whether I know your story or not.

I have my own hopes for myself to add to this collective force.

Over the past few weeks, one of my shadow selves has surfaced too often, singing her siren song, beckoning me toward the rich unhealthy foods that are my undoing.

I have strayed from my healthy patterns too much this past month, and I feel it. I need to clean up my eating and get my body moving regularly again.

Also, I want to write and post regularly to build this site and resources. These sedentary activities will compete with healthy eating and exercise for my spare time.

Today, I feel hopeful that I can do all these things. But, then I start thinking about the shadows of my past New Year’s resolutions. And, I quickly falter.

Naming my shadows means saying that I have failed every New Year’s resolution I ever made. 

And, that shadow gives me serious pause. I wonder what I have gotten myself into.

This post leaves me at the greatest loss when I wish I had the greatest nuggets of wisdom. And, here lies the familiar traps of my past New Year’s resolutions.

Sometimes, I have tried to do too much all at once. And, once I failed, I stopped trying and gave up. I went back to my old patterns.

Other times, I did not make enough changes to uproot my old patterns. Change was not broad or deep enough to take root.

Finding the balance around the doable change for the moment has been a challenge for me. So has finding the balance between grace and accountability.

At the center of any change is myself. And, making changes for myself is an ongoing process that occurs daily over time.

That is what transforming my shadows means — facing myself again and again.

For me, this process takes more than one day, more than one sound byte, more than one media cycle, more than one successful day, more than one failure.

Changes like this have been complex and ongoing in my life. Once they start, they evolve as works-in-progress.

Sometimes, these changes feel easy and natural. Other times, the changes are overwhelming and seemingly impossible.

I succeed. I fail. Back and forth. Over and over again.

Sometimes, I need to make myself accountable. Other times, I need to give myself grace.

I need countless strategies to battle the same things in myself. What works for me one day may not work the next day.

And, what works for me may not work for you.

Given my ongoing failures with New Year’s resolutions, I will not be making one.

But, I like taking apart the word resolution to find the idea of a re-solution. My focus is starting to crystallize.

I will re-solve the conundrum of myself — over and over again in the new year.

I can do this. I can focus on re-solving the challenges that come from who I am, the changes that center who I am, the changes that are central to who I am.

Re-solve provides an umbrella big enough to include my successes and my inevitable failures. The process will be ongoing.

My grandma used to say: “Wherever you go, there you are.” The echo of her voice saying these words provides the wise advice I needed today.

Any personal change has to be made with my self-understanding at the center of my process, change that works for myself, with myself, around myself, through myself.

And, perhaps most importantly, I can re-solve the conundrum of myself without hating myself — in small or large steps that make sense in the moment.

My theme for the new year is RE-SOLVE.