Simplify for the New Year

I think I can speak for many that a number of good intentions arise with New Years.
I’ll drop 10 pounds…
I’ll start to exercise more…
I’ll commit to meditation….
Stop drinking for a month…
We’ve certainly heard them, perhaps made some and for some of us perhaps missed our target and fallen off the commitment by January 7th.

I’ve never been a great fan of New Years resolutions because I think we commit to them at a poor time. ‎Life is super busy, kids are at home for a few more days, friends are around, holiday cleanup starts and many of us are tired from the deviation of usual routines and the excess that holidays often bring. We’re squished for time at best when we make these resolutions.

I wrote years ago, I’ve been more of a fan for commitments being made after reflective consideration and it matters not when you start as long as you start. While a personal fan of the “start now”, I’ve found it’s not so easy for many to “just do it”, especially in the first week of January.

If it were that easy, then you and everyone else would have done it already.

All this being said and done, do you really have time to add yet one more goal‎ into your life? Are you not already busy enough?

So I have an idea or two. Rather than setting new goals for 2017 then feeling badly when you don’t achieve or change anything, what if you decide to commit to simplify your life? Can you remove something that will create more time in your day or reduce your stress, and increase your space for self- care?

My sense is that as soon as we feel rushed in our day or compressed and squished for time, we start to live by the hormones of stress. So we see life through the perspective of “stress”. We react through the hormones of stress and we communicate through the conversation of stress.
Gotta get through the day.
Gotta push to get it done.
I’m running out of time.
Rather than feeling empowered we often feel burdened right?

At night our sleep is disturbed rather than restorative because our mind keeps going. We have difficulty turning off our day. So we wake up to the same life, the very next day and the day after that. In actuality we create a new “set-point” in how we feel which we get used to. I’d call it that “day-to-day tension” and bus”y”ness.‎ In other words this new set-point has become a habit. And we feel we need to add to this to accomplish more? Sounds like madness when I actually work through this in my head.

I’m not sure if we need to add “more”. And the thought of adding more can be overwhelming or at least for me it can. So in thinking about it, I wondered if we simplified to create “space” and wiggle room? Can we open up a place through removing something else allowing for new possibilities and change?
What if we simplify through removing that which takes us away from being “present now” or that which no longer serves?

Inspired by an article I read in a yoga journal the author spoke of “Drishti” which is a “point of focus”. What if we purposefully created a point of focus to make life more real, with less distraction and simpler?

My idea is to practice Drishti for simplifying my life. How about you? Are you able to commit to creating Drishti for your day?