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New Year’s Resolutions: Setting Goals for Personal—and Global—Transformation
It’s that time of year again. During the first month of the year, the spotlight is on setting goals for the coming year. They’re called New Year’s resolutions and often these resolutions are done tongue-in-cheek with a just-under-the-radar consciousness that “no one keeps these things anyway.” But in reality, making quality New Year’s resolutions should be viewed as prime-time training for the goal setting—and keeping—that we should be doing throughout the year and throughout our lives. It should also be a time for thinking about how our personal transformations can contribute to transforming the bigger—beyond ourselves—picture Personally, I started keeping my New Year’s resolution a couple of months ago. The last four years have been tough for me with personal setbacks ranging from my divorce in 2005 to my mother’s transition (a.k.a. death) in 2007. For me, I have found a great deal of solace and spiritual direction by going back to reading A Course in Miracles and doing the A Course in Miracles’ Workbook. The workbook is especially helpful because it provides a year’s worth of day-by-day exercises that help you stay focused on the task—and as we all know, staying focused and on-task is one of the biggest obstacles to actually accomplishing our New Year’s resolution goals. There are also a few websites that I will be visiting in 2008 that will help me with this particular resolution. They include:
Marianne Williamson (http://marianne.com): One of the key features at this site is something called the Miracle Matrix. Williamson has given thousands of lectures based on spiritual principles, primarily from A Course in Miracles. Now, through the Miracle Matrix, you can download onto your iPod or mp3 player one of those lectures each week. Additionally, you can see videos and attend live teleclasses with Williamson, have access to the Matrix message boards and receive any additional materials that she sends out. Through this process, you are joined with hundreds of others literally all over the world—from North America to
A Course in Miracles (www.acim.org): This is the site for the Foundation for Inner Peace founded by Judith and Robert Skutch in 1972. In addition to a lot of interesting history about how A Course in Miracles came into being, the site features a “Lessons” section where students can participate in daily Multimedia Lessons. For those involved in doing the workbook, the site offers workbook lessons starting with Lesson 1 on January 1st. Whatever your New Year’s Resolutions, there are sure to be websites that will help you make them a reality. For example, when I logged on to Google and keyed in “New Year’s Resolutions” there were 356,000 results and some of them, at least, were sites that offer practical and useful guidance for making goals or resolutions for the New Year or at any time on life’s journey. Here are reviews on a few of them: myGOALS.com (www.mygoals.com): The home page of this site states that it is the Web’s leading site for setting and managing all of your personal and professional goals. myGoals.com walks you through a simple, step-by-step goal-setting process for any goal, whether it’s short-term or long-term, easy or difficult, practical or lofty. They also provide pre-made GoalPlans® for popular goals, to get you started even faster. The site offers a step-by-step method that starts with goal selection and includes reminders and a personalized homepage where you can manage your goals and track your progress. Goal setting category sections help you set your goal. For example, spirituality-oriented goals are listed in the “Personal Growth & Interests” section. Let’s say you’ve decided on making meditation a central part of your spiritual practice in 2008. Click on the “Meditation” link in this section and start creating your own meditation “Goalplan.” Suggestions are given: “To remain completely at peace during my commute;” “To meditate for thirty minutes, three times a week.” However, the actual nuts and bolts of the plan are up to you (note: there are specific Goalplans like “To Become a Vegetarian,” “To Reduce Stress in My Life,” etc. that could be used to help design your meditation plan). In order to take advantage of the site with its email reminders, etc., you have to become a member. There is a free 10-day trial and the cost of membership is reasonable at $5.95 per month (cancel anytime) or $49.95 if you sign up for a year. Membership benefits include unlimited site access, goal-setting tips and advice, unlimited Goalplans, and unlimited email reminders. User testimonials like, “I’ve been using myGoals.com for a few months and I really appreciate it. I’ve used everything else out there and am sticking to your site. Thanks!” and “I wish I found this site before finishing my Master’s! Now I’m beginning my Ph.D. ... this is definitely part of my plan,” indicate that that this site just might be the ticket to making and keeping those New Year’s Resolutions. Check it out and see if it might work for you. MyMotivator (www.mymotivator.com): The goals of this site are similar to myGOALS.com. It more overtly commercial in nature, but some of the offerings seem to be worthwhile. Their motivational and self-improvement tape library contains a list of reasonably priced items—and 29 of them are free including titles like “30 Minutes to Success” and “7 Character Traits of Successful People.” The closest the site comes to spiritual goal-setting/keeping is in its “State of
Whatever your personal New Year’s resolution, let’s not forget the bigger picture. It’s fine and dandy to work on you, but remember you are connected to we and we—human, animal, everything—are connected. New Year’s resolutions are designed to have us reflect on our better natures—and to ponder the ideals of our existence. So, what better time is there to reconnect with those powerful human resources called love and compassion? No matter what your resolution is, it can be accomplished with love and compassion toward yourself, toward your friends and family—and toward the entire interconnected global community. That way our resolutions will accomplish not only personal transformation but a transformation that enriches our communities and the world.
Mary Montgomery is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises (“Freelancing with Finesse!”), specializes in public relations, writing projects and web authoring, development and publicity, especially in the non-profit sector. Ms. Montgomery has a Master’s Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at monty764@sbcglobal.net. |
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