On New Year's Day 2016, I discovered a way to reach for my goals and dream. Not that I knew this was happening. My friend Emily and I simply huddled together on a Florida beach, pens and journals in hand. All I knew then was that there was a gap between the life I was living and the life I wanted. Arriving at the process, however, had been years in the making.
My mother had died a year before and through a series of “coincidences” (more on that in Blissful Thinking, out 9/23) I’d landed in Florida. I never imagined I’d be staying.
The plan was to put a year in while I worked on finishing a play and fixing up the condo I’d purchased to generate rental income, then return to New York City. I was three months into that plan.
Unrelated but crucial — right before I left New York, I’d been actively involved in the storytelling community. Between telling stories on stage and observing what came up in my meditation practice, I’d discovered how powerful the storytelling mechanism in my brain really was. This was nowhere more true than in my love life, where I was stuck on the story of being wronged.
Loath as I am to admit it, though eight years had passed since my divorce was finalized, I hadn’t truly forgiven my ex. Not for leaving — I’d long since realized we weren’t a good match — but for how he’d left. (If you haven’t read it, that stealth intercontinental divorce story is here.) As a result, I stayed on the lookout for signs of potential betrayal. Finally I recognized — as long as I was stuck on that story in my heart, I was going to live that story.
Thanks to my addiction recovery, I knew that praying for people I felt had wronged me was a sure way to release the negative grip. Yet when I tried this with the ex, that Inner Storyteller fired up. The bone-deep forgiveness I craved eluded me and spread into (caused?) my cheerless dating life.
During that time, my meditation practice was also evolving. Before leaving the city, I met a teacher who suggested that taking short moments — where instead of sitting for hours in meditation, I could drop internal dialogue for mere moments — was a totally acceptable way to meditate. Those short moments introduced me to a peace I’d never known.
Finally, all this coalesced into an idea — what if I took short moments to imagine my ex happy? No words of forgiveness, just a purposeful, emotional recognition of him feeling the joy of happiness.
Damn if it didn’t work. Feelings of recrimination faded, and my love life grew richer too.
Back to the resolutions…
At a certain point, I’d quit making resolutions. The “Season of Resolutions” was always followed by the “Season of Regrets.” The decision to quit was backed up by something I believed I’d also learned in recovery, “Plan plans but not results.”
Perfect! I thought. New Year’s resolutions are off the table.
In one sense, avoiding the New Year ritual worked out in my favor because of the way I traditionally went about crafting my resolutions. After identifying something I disliked, I’d put its opposite on my list. The result was a feedback loop focused on undesirable things; I was training my attention on what I didn’t like.
Guess what I got more of.
There on the beach with Emily, I knew that to get into the frame of mind from which I wanted to make decisions, I needed to conjure all the good feelings I could muster. I also meditated on what I wanted to change, then wrote that word on a piece of paper that I set on fire.
My focus shifted from what I didn’t like to what I wanted more of. That year, I met the love of my life. I’ve since modified this practice into an approach that’s enabled all sorts of wonder, from producing two award-winning short films to getting a second book contract to finishing my first novel.
If you’ve followed along on the chat, you know this process is my year-end inventory. I turned it into a monthlong challenge by sending prompts over Substack’s chat each week, but this process can be done over four days.
The Ritual
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