Do New Year's Resolutions Work?
Psychotherapist and author of How to Stay Sane, Philippa Perry, talks about New Year’s resolutions.
… Talking of willpower, there are two types: Victorian will and skilful will. Victorian will takes supreme effort. With the Victorian sort, you concentrate on what you’re not getting, you concentrate on the chocolate you have forbidden yourself and then it all begins to feel like a pointless denial. But if you use skilful will, you’ll remember that chocolate gives you migraines and you relish your migraine-free existence. With skilful will, you concentrate on what you’re gaining, not what you are giving up.
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.
“What is vital, and well within your control, is being present in a consoling way and respectful enough to bear witness to the inevitable.”
~Jane Gross from A Bittersweet Season as read in “The Far Shore of Aging” http://bit.ly/NviLrd
photo by Ed Yourdon (Taken with Instagram)
Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
