Planting a Seed

    One of the ironies about new year's resolutions I found is that the more a person tries to resolve to do something good, the more it tends to backfire in some way or another. For example, witness the numbers of 'resolutions' that people make around the time of new years. I think there are many theories out there to explain why this effort 'backfires'. For example, according to Jungian psychology, it has to do with the fact that human beings have shadow selves, and these 'selves' tend to get in the way of a person's good intentions, even reversing the intentions altogether. Others simply impute it to 'lack of will power' that people find it hard to stick to resolutions.
    From my own perspective, I think that resolutions  tend to fail because they are built around a faulty view of how human beings operate. A person has an idea arising in mind, then labels it as a 'good' idea, and then tries to use that idea to inspire their decision to break a bad habit or curb some characteristic. What isn't recognized is that ideas are only singular, and they only make up one of many conditions for something to arise. I might think I would be better off to do one thing. But when a different thought emerges, I find that the first thought does not have too much power over the second. They are two unrelated thoughts. The same is pretty much the case with all thoughts, for that matter. But , then how do thoughts form into new habits?
    The problem even with the habit view is that it assumes there is something substantial, solid and real that is 'forming' the habit and 'solidifying' it for the future. In fact, it is nearly impossible to have a habit that uniformly applies to all situations. I can make the habit not to open the refrigerator when I crave chocolate, but this same 'habit' won't help me if I am seeing a chocolate bar in the store. It takes continual reflection to be able to adapt new thoughts to new situations, and it's unlikely that a single habitual thought is going to cover all situations.
    A different approach is to perhaps realize that all thoughts are impermanent, and they exist among many possibilities. If I take this approach,  there is more room to make different choices, have new thoughts or even not respond to existing thoughts. I think of this almost like improvisation. When I first learned how to 'improvise' with the trumpet in high school, the teacher had told us that there is no 'right or wrong' note, and one can simply play according to one's feeling of what note is needed in the moment. At first, I was still afraid of hitting the wrong note or making a mistake. But when I learned that playing (or not playing) wasn't devastating for me, I could relax into the process of playing/not playing, and the experience was more fulfilling than reading off a sheet.
   Similarly, if I wish to do something, it is sometimes best not to threaten  or punish myself if I don't 'fall through' on the thought or promise. Instead, I practice beholding that thought as existing among many thoughts. I entertain the possibility that there are multiple, often conflicting, inclinations within me, and try not to prefer one over the other. When I do this, I think of the new thought as 'planting a seed'. If the new thought seems wholesome and productive to me, I can gently water the thought by elaborating on it, improvising on it, and planning around it, while giving less emphasis on unproductive thoughts. In this way, I develop an interest in inclining in a certain direction, rather than pushing a particular thought. Over time, if I treat my experience with full awareness and care, I can find that my actions coalesce around the things that feel most wholesome and harmonious to me. Rather than bullying myself into 'championing' one way of being, I use a gentle approach of planting certain thoughts in order to influence myself in the directions to which I most want to turn. In this way, whatever I do isn't associated with critical self-damning or impossible standards and goals.
    Could this approach be more conducive to health and well-being? I am not going to say either yes or no, since even this idea is subject to the conditions that are unique to one's situation. However, it wouldn't be a bad thing to try this approach for a while, and see how it works.