I'd imagine you and I share views on New Year's resolutions.

They're overrated.
So 1990’s.
Passé.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel energised by fresh starts. A new year. Monday. Morning. The calm after the storm.

But resolutions?  No thank you. Not in the strictest sense of the word.

I’ll tell you for free that was I was horrified by a meme doing the rounds this time last year... It depicted 2017 as a clock, ticking through the last moments of “pain / poverty / hardship / stress” etc, and then past the 12pm threshold into the new year, with “prosperity / wealthy / joy / peace” etcetera as the order of 2018. 

It pissed me off. Deep in my bones. Because it’s bullshit, and we shouldn’t share that nonsense. It’s not how life works. And it perpetuates the myth that it is.

I’m much more encouraged by a meme I’ve seen of late. A cute cartoon character poses the question to a cartoon-character friend: “What will 2019 hold in store?”

“Flowers”, comes the answer.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m planting flowers”.

I like that. But it’s not flawless. Because it doesn’t account for the fact that the soil may be infertile, rain might not fall, the sun may bake too hard, the flower seeds may be spoiled. There are always elements within our control. And elements beyond.

But I choose to focus on what seeds I can sew today, that may very well become what they “say they are on the box”, in the new year... And also to check on the seeds I've already put in the ground. 

I’d choose these actions, any day, over an oversimplified declaration that I will be bestowed with every blessing of the known universe at the stroke of 12pm. We call it ‘magical thinking’, in psychology. It’s naive. And it’s dangerous. And it’s just patently vacuous and disappointing.

In my estimation, there is “luck”, for some very broad and overarching definition of luck. And there is effective strategic direction (seed planting). And somewhere, between the two, we find our lives.

But if you incurred debt in 2018, you’re going to have debt to contend with in 2019. And if you are skillful, and fortunate, you may overcome. If your relationship has been a hardship in 2018, skillful intervention will be required in 2019. And again, that may be sufficient. If fortune favors you. But the advent of the new year won’t automatically usher in intimacy and connectedness, “just ‘cos”.

So with that as a preamble, I was thinking, a little earlier, of how to approach 2019, from a mindset and goal perspective. I facilitate intensive “marathon” counselling sessions for couples in crisis, in my physical practice, and occasionally online. I often begin by asking the following question:

“If, at the end of our time together, this session was successful, what will be different? What will we have accomplished?”

And I thought to extend that into the consideration of a year... So I ask you (as I’m asking myself):

If, by the end of 2019, you deduce that it’s been a “good year”, or a “successful year”, or a “fruitful and fulfilling year”, what might the components of this progress be?

It’s useful to answer this question very generally, at first. And then to drill down into the facets that make your life “your life”, and ask it again specifically for each facet.

“If it’s been a fruitful year in my marriage, what would have happened / what would have changed?”

“If it’s been a fruitful year in my career, now will thinks be different, by December?”

But don’t pause there.

For each answer to these questions, ask another: “What seeds need planting today, and in January, February and March, that will give these outcomes the best shot at fulfillment and fruition?”. 

And then to busy yourself with planting and nurturing. Knowing it’s one part planting, and one part luck.

But we are only in the business of planting... We work within the parameters accessible and malleable to us... And we surrender graciously and radically to the cards we are dealt that are not in our conscious control.