48 - The Real Meaning of Resolution
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode highlights:
Welcome back and Happy New Year’s Eve!
We are talking about the real meaning of resolution, what many us set our minds to focus on in the first of every year. We often fail not too long after we commit ourselves to some New Year’s resolution. There is a reason we often give up on our promises and commitments to ourselves.
We deal with that today:
What sets us up to fail, and how do we actually succeed.
New Year’s Day is often a marker day, one in which we look towards the future and ask significant questions:
What do I want to happen?
What do I want to achieve?
What do I imagine?
What do I desire?
Out of the answers to the questions, we set up markers and set our sights on getting to the goal lines of our hopes and dreams.
We often fail, not because we lack desire or good intentions. We fail because we attempt to achieve certain things with tools that do not work, starting with a mistaken understanding of what a resolution is.
We have been trained to think that a resolution means that I need to become hyper-focused, and that I need to become bound and determined through will power to achieve the goal. The mistaken teaching actually sets us up to fail.
Failure occurs in the following way:
The phrase “bound and determined” literally means to be “tied up” or “bound,” by being constricted, or not free.
I actually become deterred (discouraged) by the very determination I think will bring success.
Being bound means to be tied up, and determined becomes deterred, or stalled, from the very success I have resolved to achieve.
Being tied and deterred is not the way to success.
By going back to the word resolution and grasping its real meaning, we can start down a path of accomplishing what we seek.
Resolution actually means:
To re-solve, literally to untie what has become a knot.
Resolve means to re-decide, to untie myself from something that binds me or stops me from having the life I seek.
We seek to be unknotted, untied, or set free from something that binds us up and deters us from the things we seek.
Resolution unties, loosens, and frees us. Yet we have been taught that is binds us to something.
We need to start with some questions that let us be curious about what “unbinds” our own hearts.
We must let ourselves be freed up or “untied” to wonder, imagine, feel, need, dream, desire, long and hope. And we need to ask ourselves what is the “what for” that the pursuit will bring us.
The reason we need to be free to explore our hearts is that hope and the willingness to pursue what we hope are at first matters of the heart. Any success we really have begins with our hearts being truly and desirously involved.
Exploring and knowing the heart is the starting point for dreams to become reality, whether it be getting in better shape; finishing a piece of writing; becoming a kinder person; or becoming more connected to God.
The first step of success is to know the hopes and longings, the needs and desire, and the “what for” of our imaginings.
Success begins with hope. For example, you hope that you can become closer to God or become healthier. Hope means that you desire something that you don’t have. If you don’t have something you want, and you dare to hope, you will have fear. You have the fear of not succeeding; not having; taking a risk and failing, etc.
Success begins with willingness to hope and being willing to pay attention to fear. (Remember, fear is a feeling that allows us to ask for help.)
Hope, and the fear that comes with hope, lead us to ask some questions:
“Am I willing to hope and deal with the fear that leads me to ask for help in moving towards what desire?”
“Do I want this ‘thing’ badly enough to become vulnerable, or even badly enough to deal with inevitable difficulties and challenges?”
“Am I willing to be in pain for what I want, and let others know about the pain?”
In other words, am I willing to be “untied” from constraints that could stop me, like pride, self-sufficiency, comparisons, and so on?
In “Living With Heart” episodes 19 and 20 we discuss feelings. We talked about how fear as a feeling leads us to ask for help, to anticipate consequences, plan for action, assess costs (emotional and time), and practice for results. We also talked about how fear gets us ready to begin, but only anger allows us to step into the risk of success (or failure). Remember: anger is the feeling that frees us to be willing to be in pain for something that matters more than our own discomfort and pain.
Being “untied” to wonder:
lets me hope
face fear
decide to risk action
Succeeding, then, is not about the results in the beginning, as much as it is about:
being willing to be vulnerable to our own hearts
make plans
take risks.
Being vulnerable, making plans, and taking risks inevitably involve delayed gratification or some kind of emotional pain—like continuing to hope when things aren’t going so well.
Hope + Fear + Anger = the beginning of accomplishing desire, and sustaining that desire when inevitable challenges occur. I am giving my heart to something, not just my mental determination.
But, is my heart “untied” enough to seek new solutions (re-solve) for my problems?
If so, rather than being “bound up” or “constricted” and “deterred” from my solutions, I am “untied” to take risks and keep taking them! I am not bound and determined; I am free to pursue!
We must remember with anger that I am not just angry “at” my weight, or my unkindness, or my distance from God, I am angry “for” something. Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd
Anger is the feeling that can keep us “untied” to seek solutions for what ails us. Anger can set us free to be in pain for something, to stay in pursuit in spite of difficulties, and to be free to even fail, but start again!
The irony is that the heart is our success instrument—it is the wanting organ that is willing to tolerate pain.
The brain is the pleasure-seeking instrument—it is the pain avoidant organ.
The heart says, “I am willing to have pain for something.” The brain says, “I will to have no pain.”
Again, you can see how resolutions are matters of the heart. We must be “untied” to hope, fear, and have anger to succeed. We must be vulnerable enough to hope, want enough to ask for help, and angry enough to have difficulties in our desire for something. The heart is more than willing and able to do all three.
The heart is:
the freedom instrument
the “saying-yes-to-living-fully” instrument
the seat of passion for something
(Passion is the willingness to be in pain for something greater than my own comfort. Passion has in it the hope we have talked about, the willingness to ask for help and the willingness to seek outcomes we desire.)
In fact, if we do not attend to the organ of the heart, as central to our well-being, the other organs will take us away from our dreams as in:
eating addictions , the stomach,
sexual addictions—the genitals,
action/thrill addictions—the skin,
fantasy addictions—the brain.
In seeking to have a resolution fulfilled, then, we face that construction takes time. A house is not built in a day. Neither is something we imagine and set out to accomplish completed in a day. We must pursue the work of the day, while we have our ultimate focus on the completion of what we are “building.”
Once passion is established, and purpose is decided, then the rest is daily planning.
Passion with Purpose applied to Daily Plans that Focus on the Final Outcome becomes the formula.
If you have passion with purpose, you rarely have to motivate yourself to continue.
Once passion and purpose are freed up or “untied,” daily living involves actively working at the plan. As crazy as it seems at first, success really is an emotional and spiritual endeavor, much more than it is a determination and self-willed endeavor.
Once we have a passion for something, it becomes something we almost cannot help but apply ourselves to doing! It almost “pushes” us, more than we have to “make” ourselves do whatever it is. For example, I have not stopped pursuing the passion to “help people see who they are created to be, so they can do what they are created to do,” for years and years. I am “untied” as a matter of heart. This endeavor has gone on for over 35 years! Every New Year is seeking to do more of this one thing, one day at a time.
Passion + Purpose + Plans = Outcomes.
We must remember, though, again, that we pursue success daily, the same way we eat a steak. One bite at a time. If we attend to the dream daily, before we realize it, we will have eaten more than several cows—though this is not the most beautiful analogy!
When you are “untied” to pursue your dreams, be aware of “The Gap.”
The Gap occurs when we focus too much on the end results, and not enough on our daily work. We can become discouraged to the point of quitting. We must remain focused on the daily work, as we dream about the end result.
To summarize, resolution does not mean our will to do something. It means to have the heart “untied” to pursue something that is good for us, and usually allows us to bless others.
Paul said it best in Philippians 4:8:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
The heart is made for these pursuits; we are created to accomplish such things. May we all be “untied” to pursue such things with all our hearts.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center