I was listening to the radio over the long New Years holiday weekend. They were taking about New Years resolutions. They were commenting on statistics that showed that the average person breaks his or her resolutions within a matter of a few short days or weeks. One of the commentators said that he avoided the inevitable experience of breaking his resolutions by not making any. I immediately sensed that this was not the best solution to the problem and it got me to wondering what was.

I realized that the answer was to make positive resolutions rather than negative ones. Thus encouraged I was so inspired that I immediately wrote my resolutions. As I was listing the positive things that I wanted to accomplish this year, I realized that they would be much more likely to get accomplished if I incorporated a regular spiritual practice into my life. So I added that as one of my resolutions. Then I realized that resolutions alone were not enough. I needed an action plan. As I wrote my plan I realized that I needed people to help me make my plan happen. I finished my writing feeling more satisfied than I have ever before with the process of making New Years resolutions.

Then I went to church and the minister preached a sermon on New Years resolutions and recommended almost verbatim, to do exactly what I had done. I felt affirmed and even more firmly resolved. She talked about the three "P's" of New Years resolutions: a plan, persons to support you and also to help hold you accountable and a daily spiritual practice to get your intention behind your resolutions. After I finished my plan, I added two more resolutions. At the beginning of the list I added, "Continue all the good things that are already in my life!" At the end of my list I added, "Focus on what is important and simplify the rest!" And, I realized that I had added a fourth "P", i.e. to make positive resolutions and not negative ones.

I think that for those of us with PTSD, there is a tendency to think like those radio announcers that I was listening to. We tend to think about all the things we don't like about our behavior and to focus on trying to eliminate or reduce those negative behaviors. We tend to get into a struggle with ourselves over those negative behaviors and the new positive behaviors go begging. In years past, the best I have come up with was a mix of positive and negative resolutions. This tended to be demoralizing as I was never entirely and sometimes not at all successful in eradicating the unwanted behaviors. And the effort to do so took energy away from accomplishing the positive ones. It was demoralizing and discouraging and eventually I forgot all about my resolutions. Out of shear determination, I probably beat the national average for keeping my resolutions, but I couldn't say that my record was impressive. It was not.

I believe that the advantage to leaving those negative resolutions off our lists is that we can avoid the discouragement and disillusionment of failing to eliminate them. The positive changes we want to make in our lives will come gradually. There are no markers to say that we are failing. There is only the hope that as we keep our energy and our intentions behind accomplishing them, we will ultimately succeed. And the more we succeed at accomplishing our positive goals, increasing our positive behaviors, the less time and energy is available for repeating the negative behaviors. So ultimately the negative does get reduced. It's just not our focus.
So my proposal to you is that you take another look at resolutions and set positive goals for yourself for this year and put your energy, attention and intention behind accomplishing those goals. I believe you will be pleased with your results.

Desired Outcome:
To learn to think in terms of positive rather than negative goals and to learn to focus our attention and intention in such a way that those goals are accomplished.

Discussion Starters:
What has my experience been with regard to New Years resolutions and with regard to goal setting and goal attainment in general? What attitudes have I developed toward goal setting as a result of my experiences? Have I tended to set negative goals? Do I think that positive goals would work better? Have I used any sort of regular spiritual practice to support my intention toward accomplishing my goals? What has worked and what has not worked for me with regard to goal attainment? What new approach could I try that might work better?

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