With every new year comes new resolutions; new aspirations, new adventures, new hope, a blank page, a fresh start. However, for many of us, those New Year's resolutions have a tendency to slip quickly through our hands and fester inside, causing us anxiety because we realize we just can't keep them, and keep up with the pace of daily life at the same time.
That's right about when Negative Nancy steps in and sends us down the spiral of no return, as we scold ourselves for not being able to carry out a simple resolution, barely making it through January of the new year. Then comes the "I'm so over it" card, which is oh-so-cleverly followed by the infamous, "Resolutions are stupid anyway!" You know the drill.
Pushing all of that nonsense aside, I've decided that this year I'm making a different resolution. A resolution to resign to the fact that resolutions, or really any resolve at all, doesn't help me move myself or my life forward. Not even in the slightest. Let me explain.
In music, in every song that you hear, there is almost always something called a resolution. The resolution is the point where the sound of the song goes from a place of tension, to a place of stability. As a singer/songwriter, I like to refer to the resolve as the safe place in a song, that place where it just feels like home.
While it feels so wonderful to be safe at home, there would be no need to be safe if there wasn't an equal opposite to it -- cough, risk, cough. More often than not, the risk is where the real joy, the real fulfillment, where the deepest and most meaningful emotion lies, the emotion that gets you from one place, from one adventure, to the next.
But if you are not moving from one place to the next, or not moving anywhere for that matter, (parked on the couch and zoned out in that safe place), the resolve you feel can quickly become heavy, routine-like, and unchallenging. As odd as this may sound, the moment in which you are the most comfortable, is the moment your life is at it's greatest risk, because that is the moment in which your life is becoming static. You are becoming static. Isn't it funny how nothing really ever is what it seems.
I would be lying if I said that I have never tried to write off this static feeling with the excuse, "Well... I'm just leaving my options open." I figured if I never closed any doors, if I left myself open to all the possibilities in the world, that I would be actively pursuing the best path for my future. Wrong.
Turns out that "leaving your options open" is making a decision in itself, a decision that actually limits your options. Hoping for a sign to move you, praying for that inspirational epiphany to hit you like a tidal wave, is a decision to hope and pray, not to move you forward, or even backward for that matter. Not making a decision is really the decision that you will not move, until the world makes a decision for you. Phew. Nothing really ever is what it seems.
If you want to live out your passions, create a better life for yourself and those around you, and want real and meaningful success, you have to move. Period. This year I may have abandoned the stereotypical resolutions, but instead I am seizing any opportunities that come my way. Saying yes to chance, saying yes to the risk, because after all nothing worth having comes risk-free.
So resign your resolutions, step out of your comfort zone, say no to the static, and spawn your life into action by saying yes. Plans will not always go according to plan, and that is the best part... never living a life of resolve. Never living in resolution.
Download Brittany McDonald's new single "Notice Me" on iTunes today: http://smarturl.it/NMiTunes
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