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If you’ve had a hard time keeping Resolutions in the past take a long, hard look at how you keep personal commitments to yourself throughout the rest of the year. When only you and your bathroom mirror know about it do you keep your promises in a responsible fashion or do you find yourself re-negotiating, back-pedaling and making excuses?

Many New Year’s Resolutions are born of disgust or exasperation after a year of failed attempts and procrastination. We make them in a punitive mindset of self-judgment. If you’ve been falling on and off of diets all year it may make sense to you to make a stern year-end commitment to empty your refrigerator and set the alarm for 5 AM to hit the gym.

But consider this hypothetical situation. You just loaned $20.00 to your brother-in-law who made a commitment to pay you back on Monday. Instead, he spent the whole week dodging you. How would you feel about loaning him an additional $100? If he hasn’t shown any ability to keep the smaller commitment would you throw good money after bad? Perhaps you’d like him to demonstrate his responsibility on the small matter before trusting him further on a larger amount of money.

So the first tip to making New Year’s Resolutions you can keep is:

1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Set yourself up to win by committing, initially, to the minimum possible. You’re probably thinking that this flies in the face of conventional wisdom that New Year’s Resolutions should be BIG life changes. But is this realistic?

Let’s look at the weight loss scenario as it’s a big one for many people. You make a resolution to trudge an hour each day on a treadmill and drop all fats and sugars from your diet when you haven’t jogged more than a half hour a week until now. Exactly who are you trying to kid? Better to commit to 4 hours of exercise a week and salad lunches three times a week to ease yourself into your new lifestyle. You can always up the ante later. Choose a level of commitment that will stretch you but not overwhelm you.

2. Chunk it down. Chunking down is a process by which you take a large, difficult to manage project and break it down into more easily handled tasks. Don’t make one Resolution for the whole year. Make a resolution for the month of January. On February make a second one. Move incrementally. For the weight loss scenario, if you started off easy you could make a commitment that on February 1st you add in weight training and switch to only whole grain carbs.

3. Tap into your support system. Let everybody know what you’re trying to do and ask for their help. Tell your spouse you’ve made a commitment to spend 5 hours a week learning new software skills and that you’ll be doing this each evening from 8 PM to 9 PM. Ask him to hold you accountable and listen to him when he does. Tell your usual crowd you’re trying to quit smoking, or cut down on the beer or lose carbs. Ask for their help and give them permission to bust you if they find you in the stockroom with a boxful of Krispy Kremes or a pack of Marlboro.

4. Write it down. Studies of small business people show that those who wrote their goals down were 20% more likely to actually achieve them. After you’ve written down your Resolution put it everywhere. Write it on each day of your daily planner. Post it on your bathroom mirror. Put it in your sock drawer and in your wallet next to your money. This will help you avoid “going unconscious”. If you’ve committed to cutting way down on buying CD’s, it can be chastening to be reminded of this when you’re reaching for the plastic in Tower Records.

5. Celebrate yourself when you reach your milestones. Most of us are hard on ourselves when we don’t reach our high standards; we’re brought up not to sing our own praises. If you set out to achieve something that is difficult and important to you it only makes sense to pause and acknowledge your effort when you succeed.

Anyone else would show you a little more consideration than you show yourself. Your boss would take you out to lunch or give you a raise. Your students would send you thank you notes. Take yourself out to dinner or away on a weekend trip and appreciate your achievement. Tell everybody you succeeded and accept their compliments graciously without downplaying your accomplishment.

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This is not suffering. This is just pain. Suffering has a dimension beyond pain.

We label things as problems and react. When we identify problems in our lives and react to them, we generally create suffering.

The cause of this suffering is that we insist on forming permanent attachments to things which are not, by nature, permanent.

To understand this better, try to come up with one thing you have today that you can be absolutely sure you will have tomorrow.

Not your job. You could be fired or your company could lay you off.

Not your health. You could find out tomorrow you have cancer.

Not your family. Your spouse could divorce you; your kids could move away.

Not your house. It could be lost to fire, flood or weather.

Yet, these may be the most important things in your life today.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t cherish and appreciate the people and things that are precious to you? Far from it. We all gravitate towards pleasure and comfort and we all want nice things. Part of the intrinsic nature of being human is that we want good things to last and bad things to go away.

So, to acknowledge that all things fade and pass away in time doesn’t mean that you’ll never have great pleasure in life and that you’re doomed to be unhappy. But the inescapable fact is that everything, the good and the bad, goes away over time.

Nothing is permanent and everything is transitory. No feeling is ever final. It’s just that we don’t act as if this is the case. We live as if certain things are promised or owed to us. Then we’re surprised and hurt when life does what it does and these things are taken from us. We end up with something other than what we think we signed up for.

The obvious solution to this dilemma is to drop the attachments to what we already have and what we want and to accept our lack of control over the realities of life.

This is one of the more helpful little nuggets of advice a businessperson can take away from Buddhism. It seems counterintuitive, but in fact it’s perfectly logical when you think about it.

When I suggested to a CEO recently that his employees would be better served if they lost attachment to the outcome of their work he had a typical reaction.

Was I nuts? Where would their motivation come from? How could he suggest that they not work towards goals? Was I seriously suggesting that they should just stop trying?

But of course I wasn’t suggesting that they not try an do their absolute best to achieve a desired outcome.. They should know what they want and work as hard as they possibly could to get it with the knowledge that they didn’t have control over the outcome. So if things didn’t turn out they way they expecte they’d at least have the satisfaction of a job well done.

The idea of lack of control was another stumbling block for our CEO.

Wasn’t it true, I asked him, that he didn’t really have control over the outcomes of any of his projects anyway? He denied this. But he was open-minded and willing to go a little further down this road. And I had had too long a run as a business person myself not to know that deals sometimes go sour for the flimsiest of reasons.

“Haven’t you ever had a deal just crash and burn”, I asked?

“Sure” , he said.

“Why did you do that”, I asked?

“I had nothing to do with it,” he responded” the other guy got bought out by”… then he stopped and caught himself with a smile.

Okay, so there was one time he hadn’t had control over the outcome. And if he could find one example – then there were more.

In fact, unless you have 100% control over every detail which may affect your project including the weather, the economy, the exchange rate, not to mention the health, life and death of all participants - the outcome is never secure.

Our CEO then volunteered that his staff had been devastated when several months of hard work had gone down the tubes. I could sympathize. It’s hard to come back from a blow like that. It’s tough to have to walk into the office the next day and start all over.

“But what if”, I suggested, “your staff had still worked themselves to the bone and done all they possibly could to achieve their desired outcome with the knowledge that it may or may not happen?

What if they would have gotten intrinsic satisfaction from a job well done as they went along? What if they would have celebrated the quality of their work, the camaraderie, the small triumphs of teamwork and ingenuity along the way?”

He thought about this and nodded slowly.

“Sure, he said “if the outcome would have been successful that would have been gravy. But all they were focusing on was outcome, outcome, outcome - not the process of doing.

So when the outcome was whipped away from them they had nothing to take away from the experience but heartache”.

Loosening our death grip on “the way things should be.” is not surrendering to fatalism. Acknowledging that what we desperately want to have happen may not happen is not giving up.

We influence the future day by day, minute by minute by our present actions. We take productive action to move towards our purpose knowing that there’s no guarantee we will get there.

We do the very best we can. It’s all we can ask of ourselves and others.

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1. It’s way bigger than a breadbox and it’s in your visual field not between your ears.
2. It presents no problems only opportunities for action.
3. It has what you need when you need it.
4. It doesn’t require anything of you except your presence.
5. You can’t lose it.
6. You can’t fight it.
7. Everybody’s got one.
8. It’s never right or wrong.
9. It supports you whether you like it or not.




10. It’s right there under your nose!

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We won’t tolerate them unless they’re related to us by blood or interviewing us for a job. Sure, they can buy us dinner every once in a while. But we don’t want to date them, sleep with them, or marry them. We say we do. We bemoan the fact to anyone who’ll listen that there are no “good guys” out there; that all men are animals, slobs or inconsiderate jerks. We say we’d take ten years off our lives to find a decent, kind honorable man.

We’re lying.

Why? Because we don’t like to admit that we willingly take shit in the name of love. It’s embarrassing and demeaning. We wonder what it says about our self-esteem that we stick with a guy who treats us badly. What would our mothers think?

Actually, a woman’s stick-to-it-ness is a tribute to her humanity. We have a natural, nurturing side that makes us want to rescue things, stray dogs, Rumanian orphans, bad men. And we want to believe so badly in the myth of a “good woman” being all a man needs to straighten up and fly right that we’ll stand by him and defend him long after our friends are planning a ceremonial bonfire of his few lousy possessions.

What’s going on here? Do we have such a need to bring light out of darkness; make order out of chaos? Well, yes. But it’s a little more complicated than that. We are picky about exactly who we’ll save. Our coupon-clipping, sansabelt-panted geeky boyfriends in their filthy apartments will not inspire this kind of dogged loyalty. Though they be completely adrift in the world and incapable of running a vacuum cleaner - let alone their own lives - they will never be the object of our search and rescue. Why not? Because they will never be a threat to our day-to-day routine. Because they not only don’t walk on the wild side – they couldn’t find their way there with a Thomas guide. They’re not dangerous. And that’s what we want.

When we say danger that doesn’t mean that we want to be hurt. It means we crave that delicious rush of adrenaline that comes from knowing that we’re in way over our heads and we don’t know what’s coming next. We’re in a situation alive with possibilities.

You see, men could always get their rocks off hunting buffalo, gathering berries and killing each other. But women, with their domestic, organized existences, could only ever taste danger vicariously through their men. They didn’t run down the road-kill - they cooked it.

Now, a couple of thousand years late you’d think we’d know better. With very few exceptions almost all avenues of adventure are open to women. We can now make our own excitement. But our hormones are a step behind society.

Most of us still have horror stories of men who stayed out all night drinking. took money from our purses, lost their jobs and lived on our couch for five months during the football season and screwed our roommates when we slipped out to the store for a bag of sugar. And although we wail that we can’t take another man like that. Don’t believe us. We not only can – we probably will.

These same men made us laugh, were great dancers, had dark, tragic sides to them – something along the lines of unfulfilled genius which only needed our deft nurturing touch to make it flower. Some of them were wounded children to our mommy. Some of them were Mozart to our Cosima. Some were Hitler to our Eva Braun. Got the picture? The only question remaining is why the Nobel Prize didn’t go to the author of “Smart Women; Foolish Choices.”

The truth is goodness bores us. The truth is when we decide on the qualities of a mate, we make the shopping list with our head but we buy with a part of the anatomy that is a little closer to our center of gravity.

And then there are the romantic myths that we buy into, which don’t exactly help matters. The myth of the strong silent type, for instance. We know it’s crap. We know still waters don’t always run deep – sometimes they’re just still. And shallow.

But we buy, hook, line and sinker the idea that left to their own dark nature men will go down, down, down. Unless women step in to stop the rot. Also, being at heart nice people (if a little gullible), we often jump right in where angels would find themselves up to their necks in quicksand.

It’s a shame for guys who are really decent and don’t want to betray their own good natures just to get a date for Saturday night. You know who you are.

You’re not really good-looking but not unattractive either. You have a sweet smile or nice eyes. You’re never overweight. In fact, you probably work out and have a good body. You make a comfortable living in a responsible position. You have what your mother and father refer to approvingly as a future. You have close ties to your family. You have a nice car, perhaps your own house and one or two interesting hobbies. Maybe, sailing, photography or painting. You need these hobbies. You have time on your hands. You couldn’t get a girl if your life depended on it.

You become a problem to your friends. You’re usually the only single person in the group. They agonize about whether or not to include you. If they invite you they’ll have to borrow a chair and use an odd place setting. If they don’t ask you you may find out and be hurt. And the last thing in the world they want is to hurt you because you’re SOOOO NICE,.

You become a cause celebre to your friends. They will mate you or die in the attempt. There is extensive networking among the group. Favors are called in and strangers are consulted. They entertain more than they want or can afford in an attempt to set up a casual, non-threatening context or mating. They coax the unsuspecting female into the web like so many arachnids, spinning tales of your intelligence, business acumen and character. It is all in vain. The woman will ask you to pass the dip, make enough small talk to be sociable and slip out when you get up to go use the john.

Somebody has to break the silence and give you poor saps some advice so here goes.

Here’s the good news. It doesn’t matter what you look like. Sure, every man has some thing that bothers him. You may be losing your hair. You may have more chins than you know what to do with. It doesn’t matter. There’s at least one woman out there looking for you. Actors already know that getting a woman is kind of like being up for a really great part. You know you can do the job if they’ll just give you a shot. What you have to focus on is getting past the auditions, handling the pressure, accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative . And maybe lie a little. So here are a few ground rules (saving the most important till last) to help you get cast.

Rule Number One. Don’t read this. Sorry. But women are not attracted to men who are unsure enough of themselves as to actually read this kind of stuff. But let’s get out of this Catch 22 by assuming that you’re not actually looking for pointers. Let’s say you’re doing research for a book and move onto…

Rule Number Two. Don’t do as you’re told. Women are not drawn to men who take directions well. Let’s say you call her at work. She’s too busy to talk and says call me at home tonight. I get in around 8. Don’t even think about it. Better you should call from a bar around midnight a little drunk from longing than to catch her fumbling at the door with keys and groceries. Never be predictable.

Rule Number 3. Very similar to Rule Number 2. Have your own game plan. Don’t ask her what she’d like to do. Tell her you know the perfect little spot/hideaway/bar and take her there. Get a rough idea of her likes and dislikes and set something up yourself. Make it fit. Don’t take her to the opera if all she owns are jeans and tee shirts. She’ll be uncomfortable and she’ll hate you for it. But don’t go the usual dinner/movie route. Take her on a picnic. At night. With real china and silverware. Gift-wrap a bunch of lottery tickets in lieu of flowers. Introduce her to your hobbies and interests. Let her see you in context. Which brings us to

Rule Number 4. Get a life. If you don’t already have one, make one up. Talk about your family. Introduce her to them. It shows character and if they’re still talking to you how bad can you be? I promise you that she won’t mind if you stand her up because you really couldn’t miss Grammy’s 80th birthday. As long as she believes you. Be assured enough to introduce her to your male friends. But stay away from double-dating with other couples in the initial stages. She’ll be able to tell from the other woman’s reaction whether you are who you re setting yourself up to be.

Rule number 5. Look and listen. Make full eye contact. There is nothing more appealing and irresistible than being really looked at. Listen to her. Ask her advice/opinion about a personal situation/politics. Feed her comments back to her later to show she was heard. Don’t lecture or talk down to her. Even if she’s dumb. Especially if she’s dumb.

Rule Number 6. And the most important rule of all concerning the “d” word. Don’t be desperate. Nothing repels like desperation. Just because she sits by the phone waiting for your call, doesn’t mean she wants you sitting at the other end waiting to make it.

If you’ve had a dry spell in terms of women in your life – that’s ok. Maybe you have standards. But if you haven’t gotten laid since college you’re history if she finds out. A woman will usually trust another woman’s instincts. She may wonder what all the others picked up on that she missed. And if you’re looking for a lifemate instead of a little fun don’t be so quick to let it be known. Contrary to what most men believe - women are not necessarily attracted to a man who is hell-bent on settling down. You’d be surprised how many women fear commitment – especially from the wrong guy.

What else? Be funny . But don’t tell jokes.

Watch your clothes. I know, I know. I said it didn’t matter that you looked like. But be reasonable. Invest in a full-length mirror. Preferably one with wings so you can see yourself from both sides and behind. (You can have fun with it if you end up in bed with her so you’ll get your moneys worth) Figure out what you’ve worn the last four weekends just hanging around the house. NEVER wear those clothes in front of a woman who is not your mother.

Black is good. Leather is great for jackets but not for pants. Hats are very good. They show character and individuality. Watch the shoes. Polish them once a year even if you don’t think they need it.

Finally, be realistic. Don’t play out of your league. Relax and remember it’s a numbers game. As the old song goes. You’ve got to know when to hold, when to fold ‘em when to walk away and when to run. Most women can’t bring themselves to just say no. She says she’d love to go out with you but she’s busy for the next two weeks and why don’t you call her on the 24th. Tell her you’re busy that day and forever after. Hang up and flush her number. You’ll feel bad for a while but you’ll end it with dignity and, most importantly, you’ll control the ending yourself. That confidence will be a powerful aphrodisiac next time around.

Of course, a really devious man would use the good/guy bad guy bit to his advantage. He’d hide what a swell fella he was until well into the relationship. Bit by bit he’d let his true self emerge – becoming gradually “rehabilitated” by her gentle, calming influence. Be warned, though, this is a dangerous game. There’s an old saying that if someone saves your life you’re indebted to them forever.

Make sure, if you allow a woman to save you from your own bad self, that she’s a keeper. She’s liable to call in the debt. The good news is if you get tired of her you can pay it off in increments – it’s called alimony.

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Answer: Here’s the vending machine theory of relationships.

Think of yourself as a Coke machine. Your husband puts a dollar in and a can of Coke rolls out. As long as he wants Coke he’ll always come to you because you deliver. Next time if he puts a dollar in and a bag of Skittles falls out he may find he needs to go elsewhere for his soft drinks.

If he can reliably pick a fight with you each time and you are coming through like a champ – where’s the incentive for him to stop?. This is more fun for him than back to back re-runs of “Cops”. Break the habit once or twice and he’ll lose interest in this game. Next time he picks on you smile sweetly and ask him what he’d like for dinner because you’re just running out to the store and you’d like to get him something special.

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Answer: Then don’t make this decision. Make another one. Chunk the situation down until you find a decision level you can live with. Can you make a decision to sublet your apartment and move there for a 90 day trial period? Can you make a decision to move there for a month? Can you make a decision to make a decision?

You’re hiding out in your indecision which has now become your comfort zone. The longer you hang out in your head and stay away from any kind of action the more difficult it will be for you to do anything. Take a shot. Nothing’s written in stone. You can always come back. Decision is not only the ending of something but the beginning of something else. Focus on the positive side of acting.

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It’s not a call to lemming-like suicide as you might think. Perhaps another C.L. maxim of a similar nature would shed some light. “Give and give until you say goodbye.” Or – as a man named Ecclesiastes once put it “To everything there is a season. And a time to every purpose under Heaven.” Meaning there is a time to run and a time to stop. When it’s appropriate to run you run flat out. When it’s appropriate to stop you stop.

I thought of this today as I was watching a Sunday morning political news show. By the time you read this ,we will either have a new President or a lot of fat cat lawyers will be very busy. I have strong opinions about whom I would like to be our next President. Whatever happens, however, I have let go of the outcome.
Letting go of an outcome is a tough concept for some people. They see it as not having faith in yourself; giving up; being negative. To admit that you may not get what you want may appear to be defeatist. In fact – nonattachment to the outcome of your actions is a strong peaceful position to take in the world. It all comes down to what is controllable and what is not.

My personal commitment to having my guy be the next President is within my control as are my actions which spring from that commitment. I can give money, time and effort. I can attempt to sway undecided voters and I can man the phones to get the vote out on November 4th. But the actual final national outcome of the election is not within my control.

So I give and give until it’s not appropriate to give anymore. I run until it would be unwise to continue running.

I see what Reality presents to me and I respond to it.

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The key lies in the word “expectations. The media, our own rose-tinted childhood memories and our deep-seated wishes for Hallmark Christmas set us up. We all want a magical time of warmth and togetherness with our loving and supportive family. Unfortunately the reality is often much different. Thanksgiving sets the tone when the whole motley crew you are sometimes mortified to call family congregates. Uncle Al won’t sit next to Auntie Jean because of a grudge forged when God was a boy. You’re presented with 14 different dietary requirements that nobody thought to tell you about sooner.

Then Politics rears its ugly head and your Southern Baptist neo-con third cousin twice removed gets into the verbal equivalent of a food fight with your Green Party niece.
And, of course, nobody helps in the kitchen. You end the day exhausted and disgusted; wondering if you really could book a last minute trip to Maui for the entire month of December. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can have a relaxed, peaceful Holiday Season. Here are five easy tips to handling stress and chaos during the Holiday season.

1. Lose the expectations. And the meaning. Take a deep breath and feel them fall from your shoulders and slide to the floor like a heavy overcoat. Make a decision to accept your family and friends, warts and all, just the way they show up. Assume that some of them will over-drink, overeat and over-pontificate. Assume that some will be deeply grateful of your efforts. To others you will always be wallpaper. So be it. However they are is their business. You don’t have to participate in gossip or feuds. You don’t have to volunteer for hissy fits or pity parties. You can have your first Reality-based Holiday if you just choose to let go your idea of how it should be and accept the way it is. Reclaim your Holiday for yourself and know that whatever happens in your home it probably won’t look like a Perry Como Christmas Special but it will be just fine anyway.

2. Put yourself high on your list. Think of a wonderful gift you would really like, buy it and give it to yourself with gratitude and much affection. Don’t forget the gift card. Better yet, give yourself a gift each day. Monday it could be a trip to that yoga studio you’ve always wanted to try; Tuesday - a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks; Wednesday a half hour alone with a good book or trashy magazine; Thursday a day without cooking. A fun twist on this is to have a good friend or significant other choose your gifts for you. Whether you celebrate 8 days of Chanukah or 24 days of Advent have them write a gift they think you would appreciate on a piece of paper for each day. Be sure to thank them for their gift.

3. Give yourself some “drop-out” time every day. Practitioners in the Buddhist tradition of Thicht Naht Hanh practice a great mindfulness exercise that you can
easily adapt. At their retreat center a bell is rung at irregular but frequent intervals thought the day. When they hear it they stop whatever they are doing and allow their thoughts to settle. They take three long, gentle breaths. Then they go back to peeling potatoes or doing laundry. You can imagine how calming this can be in a hectic day of shopping or cooking. You don’t have to use a bell as your trigger, although bells will be plentiful at this time of year. You can decide to sit and breathe whenever you turn on your left turn indicator and you’re sitting waiting for the light to change. Or you can “drop out” whenever you find yourself on hold or waiting in line for a cashier. It takes less than a minute to breathe three times. But the cumulative effect of so many stress-free moments throughout a hectic day can help you keep your sanity.

4. Finally, give yourself a cut-off point at which you accept that you’ve done all you can do and just sit back and enjoy the Holidays. If you have kids this point may come after all Santa’s presents are wrapped and under the tree and you collapse into bed. When you get up the next day it’s just pure fun time with the family. If you’re single or the kids are grown you may decide to let go at 6 PM on Christmas Eve. Whatever you’ve done – that’s where it ends. Anything forgotten or undone stays that way. Happy Holidays!

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