This article originally appeared in The ASTD Reporter and The Networker in January, 1998, and in The Learning Curve in February, 1998.
Have you given up making New Year's resolutions because they don't seem to work? I heard on the radio that people keep only 20% of their resolutions.
How about a different approach to resolutions? Making resolutions is often a matter of will power and guilt, an exercise in strongly intending to do what we think we should. Here's a great way to intuitively plan work projects and clarify personal directions and effortlessly cut through the New Year's hazards of guilt and wishful thinking by reviewing accomplishments from a future time.
Did I say "reviewing accomplishments from a future time?" Yes, it may seem strange, but it works. Try this: Set up your environment so you'll be undisturbed for twenty minutes. Assume it's the morning of January 1st, 1999! At the top of a piece of paper write: "It's January 1st, 1999." Now write down what happened during the year of 1998.
As much as possible, don't just imagine, but get into the experience that 1998 is over, and you're remembering what happened. Then write whatever happened, whatever comes to mind, in past tense. Don't try to be optimistic, or pessimistic, or any particular way. Just stay open and take whatever comes to mind as you look 'back' over the year and write what you 'remember' in past tense. Whatever happened is over, so no effort need be involved in thinking about it. Take fifteen minutes or so for this process, and write everything in past tense.
When you begin to write what happened during the past year, you may tend to reject certain ideas because they don't fit the expectations you have when you look from the present toward the future. However, just be open, take whatever comes to you without censoring, and write it down in past tense. Write whatever you 'remember', including any insights you had, or personal changes you see that you went through.
After you feel that the exercise is complete, take a few more minutes and recall how you experienced the exercise. Did you enjoy doing the exercise? Did it flow better as you continued? Did you get any insights or creative ideas? Did you get a sense of completion, peace, or satisfaction? How was it different from your typical way of planning or thinking about the future?
You may get a sense of relief, peace, presence, or rest, even if goals didn't appear to be reached. Why? Most of our lives seem to be spent trying to become someone else, or to get satisfaction from objects, events, or relationships outside ourselves. Very often we expect that we'll be happier later on, up ahead, after we complete our goals and projects. But our experience is continually depreciated by habitually looking forward to things. We're always trying to get there, somewhere or somewhen else, rather than allowing ourselves to be here.
When we change our perspective on time with an exercise like this one, we can break through this off-balance way of seeking happiness 'up ahead'. Then instead of struggling against time to get to our goals, we can just be here in peace and presence. We can--if only for a moment--be here instead of trying to get there. We can end up in timelessness, even while thinking about past and future.
Now if you want to get radical and not just do some 'thinking out of the box', but take all your thinking out of separate past, present, and future boxes, try this exercise: First, examine your thoughts about future and past, and see whether these statements fit your experience--"A characteristic feature of the future-related images is that they are located 'up ahead' of the present. You look from 'here' to ahead of you, 'there'. Similarly, the past is behind--you look back to it even though it also has a quality of leading forward, up to the present." (p. 175, Time, Space, and Knowledge by Tarthang Tulku. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1979)
Next, do the following exercise with each thought you have about the past or future: "Starting with a specific thought or expectation regarding your future, reverse the directionality by which it is known in reference to your present. That is, look back from that future to the present. Do this repeatedly, and then make a similar reversal for the case of past memories and images. Look from the past to the present. This 'looking' can at first be accomplished by visualizing yourself as actually being in the future or the past looking towards 'the present' from these vantage points. However, as you uncover a 'knowing' [or awareness] which is less tied to your self-image, you can use that 'knowing' to perform the shift . . . ." (pp. 175, 177, TSK)
Copyright © 1997 by Steve Randall, Ph.D.
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