S2 EP89 – Loving New Year’s Resolutions

Transcript

There are actually two kinds of New Year’s Resolutions:

1. What your goals are and what you are going to do to accomplish them
   
2. The kind of person you want to be

Many New Year’s Resolutions are of the first kind, such as

1. I’m going to lose 25 pounds this year
2. I’m going to exercise every day
3. I’m going to learn self-discipline
4. I’m going to double my income
5. I’m going to learn to fly
6. I’m going to take piano lessons
7. I’m going to get organized
8. I’m going to clean up my clutter

And so on….

I’m not diminishing these kinds of resolutions. It is often very helpful to set these kinds of goals for ourselves.

But perhaps this year, you can add another kind of New Year’s Resolution – the who-you-want-to-be kind.

What if your primary resolutions had to do with your thoughts and actions toward yourself and others? What if these resolutions centered around being loving, peaceful, and joyful, rather than achieving something? Here are some ideas for these kinds of resolutions. Maybe you just want to pick one or two to focus on. I encourage you not to overwhelm yourself and not put pressure on yourself, because all these kinds of resolutions take practice.

I’m listing many of them, and you might want to read the transcript and pick one or two that feel very important to you.

• I’m going to become aware of my judgments toward myself and others and how I feel inside when I’m judgmental.
  
• When I’m angry, I’m going to go off by myself and take care of my own feelings rather than dump my anger on others.
  
  
• I’m going to stop taking others’ behavior personally and instead embrace the loneliness and heartache I feel when others are uncaring.
  
  
• I’m going to remember to be grateful for every small blessing rather than complain about what I don’t have.
  
  
• I will make being loving more important than avoiding the pain of rejection.
  
  
• I will attend to the painful life feelings of loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, and helplessness over others with deep compassion for myself rather than turning to addictions to numb them.
  
  
• I will keep my heart open to learning about what is loving to me and to others rather than close my heart to protect against the pain of life.
  
  
• I will be warm, kind, and respectful toward everyone I meet, even if I don’t personally connect with them, remembering that we are all One.
  
  
• I will take loving care of my body, the house of my soul.
  
  
• I will allow my higher self to guide me in what is in my highest good and the highest good of others, rather than allow my ego wounded self to be in charge of my thoughts and actions.
  
  
• I will take the time to be with those I love and express my love for them.
  
  
• I will remember to stay connected with my inner guidance, my feelings, so that I can take full responsibility for them.
  
  
• I will choose to love, even when I am afraid. I will make love more important than control, more important than being right, and more important than winning.
  
  
• I will attend to what’s fun for me and what brings me joy.
  
  
• I will spend more time in nature.
  
  
• I will make sure I take the time for my creativity.
  
  
• I will be true to myself, neither giving myself up to others, nor expecting others to give themselves up to me.
  
  
• I will support my own highest good and the highest good of others, never deliberately acting in ways that harm me or harm others.
  
  
• I will be honest and trustworthy with myself and others, never compromising my integrity as a soul.
  
  
• I will constantly keep in mind what I want to contribute to others rather than what I want to get from others.
  
  
• And finally, I will do all I can to support the health of our planet.

I’m sure you can think of more who-you-want-to-be resolutions. I hope you take some time right now to write them out.

Imagine the world we would have if each of us made loving ourselves and others our highest priority – higher than fame, higher than fortune, higher than being the best, higher than winning or being right, higher than avoiding the painful feelings of life. Imagine the peace we would have on our planet if loving ourselves and each other was more important than trying to control getting love, avoiding pain, and trying to feel safe through accumulating things and fortunes. Imagine how wonderful our planet would be if we learned to define our worth by our intrinsic qualities, such as kindness, compassion, empathy, generosity, and creativity, rather than by achievements and money and approval.

Imagine the world we would have if we learned to be the unconditional love that is what God is.

When we focus on learning to see, value, and define our true soul self, and learn to love ourselves and share our love with others, we start to see the Oneness of all of life. 

Experiencing our Oneness is what will lead to healing our planet.

There is one New Year’s resolution I hope you make…and keep.

One of the most important aspects of Inner Bonding is opening to a compassionate intention to learn. I’ve thought a lot about compassion, and compassion is often more than people think it is.

Compassion does include the standard definition: the ability to feel empathy with another or others who are suffering, to be moved by the suffering and to want to help alleviate it.

But compassion is so much more…

It’s my experience that like love, we don’t generate compassion within ourselves; instead, we open to it. Compassion, like love, peace, joy, grace, and true wisdom, are gifts of spirit that we experience when we are open to learning about loving ourselves and others. These gifts are what the universe is. Compassion is a bright, light, loving energy that deeply connects you with yourself, others, animals, and our planet.

It’s a feeling that enters your heart when you surrender to being guided by your guidance rather than by your wounded self. 

To feel compassion requires that you are able to feel empathy for others.  Empathy and compassion create a very deep resonance with someone, so that you feel what the other is feeling in your own body. When you feel empathy and compassion for another, you feel a kind of partnership and a connectedness with that person – a sense of oneness with them.

To truly feel this depth of empathy and compassion for another or others, we need to be able to feel it for ourselves. We need to start with compassion for ourselves in order to extend it to others, to all of life, and to our planet. This means that, instead of being resistant to learning to love yourself, loving yourself and other becomes your guiding light. 

When you give compassion to others while ignoring your inner child’s need for your compassion for yourself, then what you give has an agenda attached – which is to get compassion back from others. Others will likely not feel your compassion when you have an agenda to get back what you are not giving to yourself. 

Self-compassion and compassion for others is an antidote to what ails us.

Learning how to have compassion for ourselves, and translate that into loving actions for ourselves, is a key to health, inner peace, joy, and loving relationships. Learning to see and value ourselves is essential for seeing and valuing all of life. We cannot do this when we are stuck in our ego wounded selves, resistant to loving ourselves.

Physical and emotional self-abandonment, which results from resisting love, is a major cause of illness, anxiety, depression, addictions, and relationship problems. Compassion for ourselves is basic to healing self-abandonment and creating health, peace, and loving relationships.

We cannot do harm to ourselves, others, animals, and the planet when we open to love, empathy, and compassion, rather than allowing our ego wounded self to judge ourselves and others and avoid responsibility for our feelings with addictions and with blaming others.

What ails us, our relationships, and our planet are the unloving actions that come from our intent to control and avoid responsibility for ourselves, which is what the ego wounded self is all about. Self-abandonment results in self-loathing, which people then project on to others in the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, and in the form of the greed that is wreaking havoc with our planet.

Compassion is the opposite of the self-abandonment that comes from our ego wounded self, because we have to be open and in surrender to our higher guidance to feel compassion, and our guidance would never guide us to harm ourselves, others, or the planet. 

I encourage you today, right now, to make the one New Year’s resolution that is most vital to make:

“I resolve to practice opening to learning about loving myself and others with my higher guidance, and inviting love and compassion into my heart for myself, others and the planet.”

This is the most important choice you can make for yourself, your health, your relationships, your inner peace, your joy, and for our planet. This one choice will lead to loving yourself, loving others, loving animals, and loving our planet. It will lead you out of anger, blame, and projected self-loathing, and into taking personal responsibility for your own feelings.

Most importantly, it will lead you into experiencing the state of oneness that we so deeply need to heal our ravaged planet. It’s time for us to experience what science has proven – that we are all connected to each other and to all of life.

Loving actions prevail when you feel your oneness – within yourself, with others, with all of life and with the planet. Starting with love, empathy, and compassion for yourself, and then extending that to others and our planet, is the doorway to healing what ails us.

The consistent practice of Inner Bonding is what develops the new neural pathways in the brain that develops the loving adult, the part of us that is capable of empathy and compassion, and of taking loving actions on our own behalf and on behalf of others. Brain research indicates that it’s the upper right brain that is naturally capable of accessing the love, compassion, strength, and wisdom of our higher guidance, and bringing within the nurturing that our inner child needs from us. Our society, being primarily left-brained, desperately needs the compassion and wisdom of the right brain. When we haven’t developed our higher right-brain spiritual connection, then the actions of our action-oriented upper left brain are being informed by our lower fear-based and controlling left brain, which is what is causing so many of the problems of our society.

I hope that today you make a New Year’s resolution to practice Inner Bonding and develop your compassion and strength to take the loving actions with yourself and others that are so sorely needed right now on our planet.

You can Learn to connect with your spiritual Guidance with my 30-Day programUnlocking Your Inner Wisdom, as well as with my books, Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection, and The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance.

And, of course, we have much to offer you at our website at https:www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.