My New Year's Intention: To Be Less Resolved and More Evolved.

It's the start of 2011 and like everyone else, I'm resolving to be more resolved about many a resolution.  But there's something stiff, firm and fixed about the words resolution, resolute, resolved. 

I'm all for having goals and working toward them and seeing dreams come to fruition.  In fact, I've made a few goals come to life just in the past year!  I have an amazing boyfriend who is on the same page as me.  I'm now teaching way more than I was before and am loving it.  I'm getting more paid gigs as a comic and an actor.

This feels great for me since I spent many years sitting on the couch eating Pop Tarts and saying no to life.  In fact, if you compared my life today to my life just six years ago, you wouldn't recognize me.  Physically, for sure, since I was about 4 sizes bigger.  Mmmmmmm, Pop Tarts.  But I'm also different energetically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.  I was an over eater, over drinker and an under achiever.  But that's a story for another blog another day.

Simply put, my life is drastically different than it used to be.  It's not just better.  Most days, I wake up excited!  And some days I wake up overwhelmed, tired and cranky with morning breath.  OK, most days I wake up with morning breath.  I shouldn't eat garlic past midnight.  But the point is that overall, I'm inspired.  If the past several years are any indication about how a human being can change their life, then I have confidence that my life has endless possibilities.

At 10 I knew the secret to life: a balloon, a bikini and sensible shoes

The change I've enjoyed in recent years hasn't necessarily come from envisioning a certain life and rigidly sticking to that vision.  I got clear about what I wanted, but mostly how I wanted to feel: free, creative and self expressed, loving and being deeply loved by myself and others who I care about, inspired, fulfilled and happy. 

I took small, do-able steps and walked through doors where I felt the energy to be the most strong and delicious.  Most important, I continued to deepen my meditation practice so that I could have a strong, clear compass for myself and actually SEE these doors opening along the way. 

And I've been developing a barometer that helps me feel the difference between the true winds of change and being swept away by distraction or doubt or fear.  My relationship to myself and the Universe has grown stronger and stronger the more I sit and meet myself day after day.  And, like my meditation practice, I see over and over that life is about evolving with it all, rather than staying fixed or resolved.

I am letting go of some very firm, fixed ideas about how my life is supposed to be today.  No, I never won the Tony award or inspired a new dance craze called The Pop Tart or made a million dollars by the time I hit 30.  But wow I'm doing some things and meeting some people I never thought I would!  And thank God for that! 

At 17, I thought I'd be doing Shakespeare in the park and serious drama the rest of my life and I turned my nose up at making people laugh in comedy clubs.  I am so glad I listened to my gut and not my fear or fixed ideas when I started contemplating comedy and teaching and the beautiful relationships I have in my life today.

At 17, playing Kate in Taming of The Shrew.  Iambic pentameter and a bad perm all in one show.

So I resolve to continue to evolve.  I resolve to be determined and to stay in action, yet to be open and flexible.  To ebb and flow and lean in to the curves.  To get out of my own way and to change and grow as my path does.  That's not just surviving, that's thriving.  So wish me luck.  As a former resolutionist, I need all the help I can get being more of an evolutionist.