How To Make New Year’s Resolutions That Truly Last

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So many resolutions, so little time! And so much effort. Let’s face it, by Dec 31^st most of us are completely exhausted. This has been a very challenging year, to say the least.

This New Year you may imagine a future self who exercises more, has a healthier diet, no addictive behavior, and more patience and kindness with loved ones and ourselves.

The resolutions you hope to keep in the new year begin with the best intentions. Why do they never seem to make it past February?

A primary reason for this is that you are often unaware of the many parts of yourself who have influence over what you do. They may sound like conflicting voices in your head.  When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, you are bound to have opposing points of view. For example, one part of you wants to exercise and one wants to relax and pop a beer. 

In the words of Walt Whitman “I contain multitudes.” Several areas of psychology such as Jungian, Gestalt, Voice Dialogue and Internal Family Systems address the separate parts which are collectively imagined to be a unified “me.” All of these approaches agree that there are several primary selves you are aware of, but way more that you are unaware of. These subpersonalities are like the characters who show up in your dreams at night. They contain information about what is getting in the way of your best intentions.

At Presence, we offer tools that help you become acquainted with these hidden parts of yourself. With more access to your subconscious mind you can understand your deepest fears and desires to start living the life you’ve always wanted. 

Our Attention Determines Our Reality

Your attention is your superpower, like a Jedi’s sword. It is the force within you which creates your world. 

Your attention literally gives life to the object you focus on. When you keep parts of your body in your awareness, you can increase blood flow and temperature in the area. Objects which are outside of attention do not actually exist in the present moment. This means that what exists in your world is only what you focus on through your perception NOW. The rest is memory and imagination about the future which is not currently present. Once you fully appreciate the control you have over the world you experience you can learn to wield your Jedi sword to create the world you want to experience.

Below is an interesting illustration of how your attention or selective focus determines the world you experience. Below is a hilarious YouTube video of an experiment where a man in a gorilla suit walks across the screen. Almost no one sees him because they are paying attention to the basketball moving back and forth. (Of course now that you know he’s there you’ll see him! Try it with your friends.)

There are hundreds of examples of selective attention you encounter every day. For example, imagine yourself walking down the sidewalk and notice a shiny red car in the window. It is the exact one you always dreamed of owning. You could see yourself driving in it, hair streaming in the wind. Total freedom. No responsibilities. Suddenly, your reverie is broken by a loud sound on the street behind you. An ambulance goes racing by.

When you look back at the window you notice your face reflected in the window. Your face was there all along, but focusing on the car your self-image was absent. This time you think, “I look tired, I need a vacation.” You are now inhabiting an entirely different world than you were a few minutes ago.

There Is No One Single “Me” Which is Determining My Behavior

According to neuroscientist David Eagleman, the motor which is driving the auto of your selective attention is under the hood or out of conscious awareness.  In his book “Incognito” he explains that “the conscious mind is the broom closet in the mansion of the brain.” This means that what you are conscious of is a tiny percentage of the tasks your brain performs without your knowledge.

Eagleman also explains that the idea of a single “me” is false. The brain is like a “neural parliament, with different political parties battling it out to steer the ship of state.” What you imagine as an individual “me” is actually many subpersonalities with different drives and goals.

For example, when presented with my favorite dessert of warm chocolate chip cookies, I immediately hear conflicting voices. One part wants to eat them ASAP, another part says “no, it’s unhealthy.” A compromising voice says, “OK just one and I’ll go to the gym later.”  I am aware of many different voices arguing with each other but who is arguing with whom? And who is the impartial observer of it all? There are even more separate parts of ourselves we are unaware of who have a profound influence over our behavior.

Life is Like a Dream Where All The Characters Are You

Your perception of the world is like a dream in which all the characters are aspects of yourself. How you perceive your life— your work, your friends and family—is a mirror reflection of your core beliefs. Many of these beliefs belong to different subpersonalities which you are unaware of. As Eagleman explains, the primary engine driving our behavior is under the hood or out of conscious awareness. 

Although all of the different subpersonalities have the identical goal of survival and happiness, they have different conflicting ideas about how to achieve this goal. They can cause us to make bad choices, feel stuck or seem as if our goals are out of reach. Becoming aware of their points of view gives you the choice to change aspects that are out of alignment with your current plans. Instead of working at cross purposes with our New Year’s goals, we can secure their cooperation in making our intentions our reality.

Virtual Reality, Like Lucid Dreaming, Holds the Key

As I mentioned in my previous post, virtual reality has much in common with lucid dreaming.

We all have some experience of encountering many different people in our dreams at night. The characters and events which arise from your mind at night give clues to the deeper aspects of your conditioning. Thus dreams can be used to speak with the different parts of yourself and tap into your subconscious motives.

If you were lucid or aware during the dream, you would be able to question characters, which represent aspects of your own consciousness. You can ask them who they are and what insights about your deeper self they reveal. The answers are often surprising and life-altering.

For example, in my dream last night I spoke to my father over the phone. I hadn’t heard my actual father’s voice in 5 years, yet the dream felt very real. All of a sudden I had the thought, “you must be dead since your ashes are on my mantle at home.”  This break with reality was enough for me to realize I was dreaming. 

Once I became lucid or aware it was a dream, I asked my father to answer a question about something I was struggling with. When he was alive, he used to help me with financial issues.  He answered my question, thus he seemed to give me information that I believed I didn’t know. After I woke up, it was clear that the information he told me was something a deeper part of myself wanted me to know.

How Virtual Reality Can Reveal More About Reality

Lucid dreaming is a unique practice ground for healing and life mastery. It can take decades of practice to become a skilled lucid dreamer.  Using virtual reality as a tool, many of the aspects of lucid dreaming are now within reach of everyone. At Presence, we are developing a technology that allows you to tap into your subconscious mind.

Using our new tools, you can now question the different aspects of yourself and tap into the wisdom they offer. You can also rearrange the dream, a skill available only to advanced lucid dreamers. By doing this you can resolve conflicts, and inhabit the life of your dreams. Before we could only imagine our future goals. As I explain in my previous blog post, physical and emotional transformation is more effective using virtual embodiment.  This is because when you inhabit the desired state in VR, your brain doesn’t know the difference!

Many people who have used Presence are surprised by the new possibilities it uncovers. Solutions never before imagined can come into view.  With this new information, you are free to make wiser decisions and lead a more fulfilling and purposeful life. Using Presence, you can literally inhabit the “you” of your dreams.

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If you’re interested in finally letting go of what’s been holding you back, be among the first to experience PresenceVR at an upcoming in-person workshop.

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