The amount of negativity that comes into our lives on a daily basis can be overwhelming.  Sometimes it’s the news .  Sometimes it’s what other people in our lives are saying or doing.  Sometimes it’s just our own thoughts recycling worries or past hurts.  How many of the most popular TV shows are about murder, terrorism or emergency room surgery?  We sit for hours and take it all in.

That’s why we need to feed ourselves that which uplifts and sustains us.  We need to feed ourselves a new thought or a way of looking at life differently.  It could be reading a life affirming book or an inspirational scripture.  It could be listening to beautiful music or mantra chanting.  Or a lecture by a spiritual teacher.

Take a look at how much time per day you open up to the ‘junk food’ mental input.  Start planning how you will begin to balance that out with ‘health food’ for your soul.

I gave up this New Year tradition a long time ago because when I ran out of momentum, usually sometime in the middle of January, I had the irrational thought that I had to wait till next New Year to start again. Needless to say, there were many years when I didn’t accomplish very much.

Then I gave my power to Mondays. Mondays would always seem to be the day when I was supposed to start new things. I put a lot of psychological energy into Mondays. So I took the cycle from “If I fail at my resolution in January I have to wait till next new year to start” to “If I don’t make it by Tuesday, I have to wait till next Monday to start” . . . especially with diets and exercise programs. “I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna start on Monday.” Monday afternoon I’m doing good. Monday night I slip up, so I have to wait for next Monday to start again.

Fortunately, I was introduced to the slogan, “Each day is a new beginning.” So I was able to bring my focus of resolve from Monday to the start of the new day. But if I messed up in the middle of the day, I felt I had to wait until the next morning.

One day Goswami Kriyananda, my spiritual teacher, suggested that every breath is a rebirth. Every breath is a new life, a new incarnation, a new opportunity to do things differently. You could even say every thought is a rebirth because every time you have the opportunity to think a thought, you have the opportunity to think a new thought, something that you never thought before.

Here’s a new thought: Guilt is probably one of the most devastating emotions we can bring into this process of resolutions. You know how it is: “I’m going to meditate every day this year. This is my resolution.” Then all of a sudden you miss one day and you’re devastated. “Oh, no — I blew it! I’m a bad person. How could I have done this. I’ve broken my vow!” Then you realize you’ve spent so much time being guilty that you didn’t meditate that day, either. Then you think, “I’ve blown it forever. I’ve ruined my next twelve lifetimes!” Even when it’s not logical, we can begin to think that way. You have to be aware that there is not a guy sitting up there on a cloud with a report card going, “You get an F in meditation. You’ve blown the semester.” It just doesn’t work that way.

It’s the next breath you take! It’s the next moment! It’s: “Oh, I forget to meditate; I’d like to meditate now” and you just go on from there. If we beat up on ourselves, it becomes an endless cycle of not doing what we wanted to do.

There’s something rather unique, called “the rebound effect,” about resolutions and vows that we make with great determined intention. As soon as I resolve to go on a diet, somebody buys me a gift box of Fannie May chocolate. This has to be one of the underlying laws of the universe. And if you resolve to get organized, some crisis comes into your life; a couple months later you say, “What happened to the nice neat desk and color coordinated file folders I visualized?” It’s almost like a test where the universe says, “Are you sure you really want this? How willing are you to really do this?”

A couple of years ago, I thought I’d keep it simple. My one resolution was “to be happy.” Right after I made that resolution, I was surprised by an article in the newspaper quoting a writer for a psychological journal. He said that people who are happy are really experiencing a mental illness. The rationale was because life is so grim and gloomy, if you’re happy there must be something wrong with you. It caught me up short. What is the world coming to if happiness is a syndrome? If people who are really happy are just deluded? Yikes! I took a deep breath. “What I really want from life is to be happy,” I re-affirmed. “To be joy-filled. To feel peaceful and uplifted.”

We deserve to be happy. A loving, compassionate God, our loving father/mother/co-creator, wants us to be happy. Accept that you deserve to be happy, you deserve to be joyous, you deserve to be filled with bliss, you deserve to be at one with the divine within you.

When you can be in a good place, you’re healing to others. When you are happy, healthy and sane, the people around you benefit. Your happiness is never yours alone. It spills out to surround you and fills others around you with joy, too.

Best wishes for a happy new breath, new thought, new year!

Originally published in The Monthly Aspectarian, January 1998.

But he had two suggestions that at first seemed so mundane that I almost ignored them.

The first was to take an afternoon nap.  Someone immediately raised her hand (not me) and said, “But I’m at work all day.”  He said, “Take it when you get home from work.”

The other suggestion – directly geared toward people who are out in the working world all day – was to take a shower and change out of work clothes immediately on getting home after work.

The purpose of the shower is to cleanse the aura of all the vibrations of other people and environments picked up during the day.  He said the shower should be warm or cool, not hot.  No soap should be used, just let the water pour over you.

I decided that these two suggestions would be my takeaway techniques from the retreat.

For the past three weeks, I’ve come home from work, taken a shower, put on fresh clothes and lay down on the bed for anywhere from 20 – 45 minutes.  Sometimes I’ve fallen asleep.  Other times, it was just resting and drifting.

All I can tell you is that it’s made a huge difference in being able to let go of my work stress.  Back in the day when I had kids at home, I don’t think the nap part of this technique would have been possible to put into action.  But it fits perfectly into my lifestyle right now.  I get up feeling refreshed, like I can start anew.

I’ve always believed that every day is a new beginning.  Now I feel like every evening is a new beginning, too.

It’s the verbal aspect of contentment that I am having a problem with right now. According to my teacher, verbal contentment is not complaining. It is astonishing how much a part of our cultural conversation complaining is. It’s not just used to vent anger at a specific situation. It’s used to build rapport – to bond with others over common aggravations of everyday circumstances. It’s part of humor. And it’s that sub verbal murmuring we do as we read an email with another task from the boss or from another net newbie forwarding the “Bill Gates will pay you for reading this” email.

The only way to tell exactly how much complaining you’re doing is to have a ‘complaint fast.’ It’s like fasting from food, only it’s spending 24 hours not complaining. Yikes! I try over and over again to be a happy camper, and then something sets me off. The next thing I know I’m talking back to a commercial on TV or agreeing with somebody at work about how bad the weather is (it’s spring so we’re in the rain complaint zone, having completed the “oh, no, it’s snow” winter rants).

Anyway, I’m done complaining about my complaining. Remember be aware not only of what you’re doing, but of what you’re saying. Verbal contentment is a powerful practice.

Here’s a poem from Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh that is a type of contentment meditation practice:

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.

Don’t just be a participant in your life. Be the observer. Watch what’s happening emotionally at various points throughout the day. Are you happy right now? What exactly are you feeling? Emotions are not the real ‘you.’ Emotions ebb and flow. Happy/Sad, Excited/Bored, Loving/Crabby.

Important tool: Keep a journal. Not the writing a book type of journal. A journal to remind you of where you are at emotionally, right now, today. After a while, go back and reflect on what you have written.

As a long time journaller, I’ll tell you some embarrassing secrets. Every year, I write all about my resolutions to lose weight and de-clutter my house. When you go back in your journals twenty or thirty years and see the same darn resolves, you are face to face with some interesting karma. The other secret is, very often the things I am so emotional about that I have to write pages and pages to calm down, a few months later, I have no emotional attachment to that situation at all. This insight has helped me to regain emotional balance sooner than later.

I will continually encourage you to journal and write more about that. In the meantime, take a notebook (or a word.doc if you must) and just jot down a few things about today:

Your strongest emotion today.

The most unusual occurance of the day.

What you are most grateful for.

Something you learned or something you accomplished.

Again, I emphasize jotting, not literary writing (unless that gives you great pleasure).

Observe, reflect, remember.

What you are today is a result of your creativity from the past.

What you will be tomorrow is what you are creating today.

You can absolutely use your creative power to change your future. We create with what we think, what we say, and where we put our energy in our lives.