How to Succeed at Your New Year's Resolutions, Part 1: Wanting Won’t Get You What You Want

Thank you to all those who have contacted me to help stop seismic bombing in the Arctic Ocean. So grateful! We are still looking for volunteers who can help with company research, specifically, we are looking to uncover the companies that are invested in profiting from exploiting the Arctic. If you are interested in lending a hand to this work, please contact me directly at parvati@parvati.org.
We are working on building a comprehensive website for the great content I have been putting together: videos, music, words and more; as well as a site to represent our work at parvati.org. We should be seeing these live soon. In the meantime, here is some food for thought to help you start your New Year with some extra inspiration:
HOW TO SUCCEED AT YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
WANTING WON’T GET YOU WHAT YOU WANT
Many of us want to make lasting changes in our lives. As New Year’s Day comes around, we feel excited about the possibilities it brings. With a wish for better times ahead, we write a list of ways this year will be different. But as life’s challenges return to our lives after festive gaiety, we find ourselves once again feeling stifled by the things we had hoped would be different. Despite our best efforts, it seems we cannot succeed at our New Year’s resolutions. How come?
For the most part, we do what Einstein said was not possible: we try to solve problems with the same energy that created them. We feel unhappy, so we want things to change. But wanting is the source of our unhappiness, because it comes from a sense of lack. When we want what is right here and now to be different than it is, we are resisting the moment in some way. In so doing, we rob ourselves of being able to experience the fullness of life, as it is. We suffer because we are attached to the idea that the moment should be somehow other than it is.
Like chasing the proverbial carrot in front of a donkey, we can feel like the things we want are just always out of reach, no matter how hard we work, not matter how much mojo we put into our efforts, no matter how determined we may be about our New Year’s resolutions. That is because wanting comes from a place within us that feels broken and separate from the universe.
To make New Year’s resolutions or any change that will last, we must first understand that though our feeling broken or lacking may seem true, in essence, it is an illusion. In truth, we are always connected to and a part of a loving universe. We are always loved and never alone. In that understanding, we come into contact with our wholeness, our worth, our goodness, our ability to make real and lasting changes.
But how many of us feel continually loved? If this is the truth, why don’t we feel this way all the time? We are habituated into projecting ideas onto what is happening in our lives, trying to create how we want life to be. In a way, we are attached to trying to manipulate the moment so it suits the needs of our ego. The problem with this is that no matter how much we try to change our lives, we cannot, because first we must get real about the nature of wanting.
When we project our wanting onto what is, we continue to feel unhappy, because we are not seeing what is clearly. The problem is not ourselves or life, but our perspective fuelled by wanting. No matter how small or lofty our resolution list may be, we will not succeed in actualizing it if it comes from wanting. So to succeed at our New Year’s resolutions, we must first understand that we are not seeing clearly, because we are seeing life through the illusion of wanting.
Permanent happiness cannot be built upon mirages, no matter how hard we try. A resolve cannot come from an imposition of our limited ego or will upon life. Such an imposition may provide occasional, temporary and limited effects. But they don’t last because we are working from a divided sense of self. Our personal will, driven by wanting, is limited in its potency. It is manufactured by our ego, which is divided from the whole. A true and lasting resolve comes from clarity, free from wanting and rooted in the knowing that the universe has our back.
When you soften to and meet exactly what is going on in your life right here, right now, you stop running from the past or towards the future. You begin to see your life with greater sobriety and clarity. In realizing that wanting is empty and not the way to lasting change, you stop being attached to its endless cycles of unhappiness.
Our ego says that is we stop wanting, we will be stuck right here forever in this unhappy place. But the opposite is true. But letting go of wanting, we step into our sense of being interconnected with the whole and from this place we contact our deepest joy and our true power, that is connected with divine will. In this place, your heart’s desires emerge more clear than ever, and you feel inspired to bring them to life.
As you let go of wanting, you begin to create more space in your life to be present for it all. In so doing, you open to yourself, and to life. It is then that you stop trying to change everything in life to meet your ego’s ideas of how things should be, and instead contact the divine will that arises from your joy. Touching your deepest joy lights the way to your connection with and support from the universe. The universe vibrates at the frequency of joy. Your joy is the universe’s joy. When you contact your joy, not only are you in touch with the whole of the universe, but you tap into its infinite support and resources to realize your true magnificence.
EXERCISE
To have lasting results, you must go deeper, beyond relying on your limited ego or will to make change. So between now and the time I post Part 2 of this blog series on resolutions, I invite you to do a little experiment. See if you can begin to notice wanting in your life. In which ways are you perceiving life as perpetual lack? In which way do you feel you are constantly chasing that proverbial carrot, always just out of reach?
When you notice you are in wanting, gently remind yourself that those thoughts will not lead to lasting joy. Through they may appear real and tempting, think of them a bit like white sugar – sweet for a bit, but mad of empty calories with no lasting nourishment.
By truly understanding how wanting leads to suffering, you begin to let go of being so attached to it. As you really get that wanting is a mirage, you will no longer give it power. It is then that you set the foundation for lasting change.

I post on Life in the Positive Possibilities every Sunday with love. If you have enjoyed this, you may wish to listen to my musical works, check out my upcoming book Confessions of a Former Yoga Junkie: A Revolutionary Life Makeover for the Sincere Spiritual Seeker, and find out more about me at www.parvati.world.
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Love,
Parvati