Shake it out

It's that time of year again! The time where we all say smart, snooty sounding things like how we don't DO resolutions when it's really just a supreme lack confidence in our ability to actually KEEP doing our resolutions. Last year we made (I say we because I can't imagine you weren't influenced to at least TRY to keep the resolution I insisted we make together) the resolution to trust our guts about people and I think a lot of us did a pretty good job with that.  I remember thinking more than once at revealing moments with friends both old and new, "Well, I guess now I know all I need to know about you," because I practiced all 365 days this year trusting my gut.

And besides giving up the diet cokes AGAIN and dropping the same 15 pounds we drop together every year, what have we got?  You know I've been working on meditation this year.  I'm very distracted, but I try so that's something and I have learned a thing or two from it.  One of the whole points of meditation and mindfulness is to live in the present moment which doesn't sound that difficult, but is terribly difficult if you have a brain which responds to any shiny thought or iphone ping. Turns out, for me, the whole value of that project has to do with my constant judgement and evaluation of myself and every thought.  If you are meditating and a thought about how you can never focus comes to mind, you simply label that thought - judgement - and sweep it away so that you can return to your meditation.  Simple in theory, but not simple at all when you begin to realize how many of these thoughts you have in a just a minute of yourself and whatever situation you come across.

So that made me think, what if a person could apply that simple practice to the rest of her life? Do you realize that saying things like, "I'm not a morning person" actually creates a prediction for a lifetime of terrible mornings? You did that to yourself. If you only said, "It's morning and I am a person who has to awaken at 6:30" (or maybe something that doesn't sound so much like a robot) then you'd just be a person who gets out of bed around 6:30 and that's neither good nor bad.  Interesting that all the recovery stuff I've read says to live in reality and live it one day at a time - maybe it works because in that world every day is a new day, separate from the others and living in reality usually involves just letting things be exactly and only what they are - morning and a person. And then we try again tomorrow and the next day.

That's something as simple as mornings. What if you applied it to relationships?  If you are living exactly in the present, you're not anticipating all the ways you are likely to screw things up and you're not allowed to bring all your negative thoughts about how you have screwed up before this moment. You don't have to be who you've always been, or even who your ex said you were. How liberating to set those regrets, those limitations, down.  Tricky business, this present living stuff - stripped of judgement and anxiety, but entirely possible I think - and I really hated mornings.

For months I've tried to think of the right way to talk about this song with you and I think New Year's is about the best time there is for it.  I think that Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine could make Happy Birthday rock, but she really knocks it out of the park on "Shake it Out." This song about regret and about how tightly it holds to us (or we to it) speaks to me and I think maybe the best line I've ever heard sung is, "It's hard to dance with the Devil on your back so shake him out."  That's what I'm thinking about resolving this new year. What if you just laid it down - those things that you carry around that cause you not to dance? Those things that bring you shame or fear and keep you from laughing and from possibility?  Could you do that? Could you just look at them in the light, eulogize them on December 31, shake them out and then restart? Burn 'em, bury 'em, shout it out on your therapist's sofa - do whatever you need to do with them, but don't awaken on January 1, 2013 with their influence taking another step with you. It takes work but it's possible.

Now I'm not sure what awful messages you've practiced sending yourself for the last however many years. Maybe you stand in front of the mirror every morning and practice saying positive motivational things, but maybe you do like a lot of people and occasionally give in and listen to a running tape of old failures and regrets, an endless loop of self-fulfilling prophecies created by who knows what, but endorsed and repeatedly enforced by only you.  I'd love for December 31 to be the last day we give those labels any weight in our decisions, our relationships, our future. It really is hard to dance with the Devil on your back. Here's to shaking it out in 2013.