The First Step

How do you make a resolve to change your life?  

Resolve. To decide firmly on a course of action. And not be distracted by both external and internal forces. It is the internal forces which usually derail me. Once upon a time I had decided on a course of action, shut myself away from the world and prepared for an entrance test. 99% in my external environment believed I had no chance but I knew I'll nail it. And I did. (Of course, the irony is that in retrospect I think it was probably the worst decision of my life).

I keep repeating this story to myself a lot and I keep asking myself, why can't I do the same for the things I want to do most now? Why can't I shut myself in my study and write? Something I've wanted to do since I was eleven. Why is it so hard to stay up creating stories and weaving narratives when I had done it all so many years ago for a boring, good for nothing business school entrance test?

I've gone over these questions many times and I think I've found an answer. I'm afraid of failure. Of not writing something good enough. This fear is so great that I'm terrified of putting pen to paper. This fear is a reason why I've kept away from the blog. And if I'm really honest, I've sort of used this fear as an excuse not to write. 

Today, the third day of the new year, I decided to chuck this fear out of the window and started writing. Even if it's just this blog entry. One has to start somewhere...

2014 - The Year of No Resolution

It's not a good idea to pen down resolutions and keep them neatly in a folder. You're bound to find the paper (or papers if you are ambitious) when you're throwing out the old to make space for the new (an exercise some of us indulge in when the new year starts) and once you've come across those lined sheets there is no other option but to make a trip to the guilt motel.

After making several trips to the guilt motel last year, I have deleted the word resolution from my life. Resolutions, in my experience, are dangerous creatures. When I made resolutions last year, which I duly noted down, I limited myself to those six or seven points. I made a parameter around my life and put in 'ifs' and 'buts' over every action. 'If I do the above in two months' time, I am entitled to this. If I manage to finish this by ------ I will -----------'. I had become my own moral, emotional and spiritual policeman. A control freak. A sort of nasty departmental head.

Resolutions made me lose my spontaneity. If I wasn't able to meet a certain task at a specified time, I lost interest in doing it. Listing things down into neat sentences and keeping it all together in a folder did not make me a more organized person. It made me an unhappy person. And yet I kept going back to the list, hoping that by rearranging bits of it I'd find answers. It was only in the latter half of the year that I realized that the answers lay OUTSIDE the list. 

The past year I did a lot of things which were not part of my resolution wish list. And it was these unplanned events which made me a different person; more fulfilled, happy and confident. As soon as I let the resolution list collect dust, I was able to leave my comfort zone and discover the new old me. 

So I resolve to make no lists this year, except for grocery. Unplanned grocery shopping is a one-way ticket to the guilt motel! 

Think, write, read, create...

....and live in the moment, all through this new year.