New Year's Intentions

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New Year's Day is probably my least favorite holiday. Even as a child, to me it seemed anti-climactic after all the holiday cheer. People were so happy during the months of November and December. Then with the New Year everyone seemed to return to their humdrum, everyday selves. So was the love and joy of the Yule season just a fake or a respite from our dreary lives? Just as I checked out of organized religion because it didn't work for me 24/7, many times I've distanced myself from holiday revelry because it doesn't last 365 days a year.

Part of my problem with the New Year is the New Year's resolution. I found that there was no better way to insure failure than to make a New Year's resolution. The issue of the resolution itself was always something I didn't believe was attainable in the past. Why would it be any more attainable if I made it a resolution that I "must" accomplish? Yep-writing out a New Year's resolution has always been an exercise in futility to me.

Maybe part of the problem is that I treat New Year's Day as different from every other day of the year. Just as Sundays were different when I was a member of an organized religion. Or Christmas is different than other days of the year. I have to have a system that works 24/7, 365 days a year no matter what I'm about.

I think the difference between making a resolution and setting an intention is that when I live with intention, I live joyfully. Making a resolution is more like telling myself I "have to" do something that I don't necessarily want to do. Living with intention is about doing what I love doing when I want to do it. It's about creating the life I want to live and loving every minute of it. When I live life intentionally, there is no more struggle because I am the creator. If I don't like what I've created, I can create something else.

On this first day of 2011 I'm setting my New Year's Intention to live each day in full awareness of the Presence, acknowledging the love of the Creator, and in gratitude for the abundance given to my by the Universe.

Namaste!