Toss the Resolutions

Reflection time! The New Year – the time we all rethink our lives, our paths, our careers and our health. We do this, set some new goals and then (most of us) usually break those resolutions.  I did… I woke up on January 1^st, and said I would not eat bread or sweets, then on a train coming back to DC, having eaten little for lunch ate some chocolate hazelnut candies. Ugh.

This year, I am not going to be hard on myself for being human.  I am easing into new ways.

Someone once told me a story about two cars driving side by side on a highway. One driver turns the wheel just a tad bit, and eventually, over time, the drivers are not driving side-by-side.  One driver is on another road, heading in a different direction.

It is the little shifts, the small changes that redirect us and get us to a different place.  Can you recall a moment in an old job where you had a glimpse of a new job? Or the first time you saw the person who is now your partner?  Those tiny moments, little openings for some variation, that’s how we start to paint our lives in ways that are a bit unusual!

So, what’s up for you this year? Simplicity? Abundance? Completion? Or a promotion? New hobby? New friendship? And once you know what it is you want for this year, how do you get from here to there?  How do you find the space and time to free up your mind and your schedule so those little shifts, those tiny moments of different thinking, spark a new way of life to emerge?

For me, the answer is yoga.  It is in each moment of practicing yoga that I find the clarity of mind to access those little possibilities.  It is just in that moment of ahhhh… feeling a great stretch and opening as arms go high.  Or it is when I can feel truly grounded and stable (not easy for me in DC) in a balance pose, that I am free.

Whether on a yoga mat, running around Burleith, walking through Glover Park with your dog, or watching your child take a nap… I invite you to join me and others in discovering these little sparks of possibility that give us the inspiration, the freedom and the power to shift slightly, so the big changes we want in our lives become real.  Take the time to care for your self, to stop and see life speeding by; it is this time that we access the potential sparks for those transformative shifts we all want.

This year, toss out the resolutions!  Instead open your mind and invite in the tiny glimpses of a life that is more full of everything more you want.  And enjoy it!

by Cristin Tighe, Director of Spiral Flight Yoga (www.spiralflightyoga.com), just next to Starbucks and across from Einstein Bagels.

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