Happy New Year!

The garden tastefully decorated for New Years

"The master acts by doing nothing." 
--The Tao Te Ching

I'm looking forward to a new year to focus on our ambitious work of trying to do less of stuff that sucks.

This video is just one of a dozen explanations I heard this week of why nearly 90% of our resolutions fail: we just don't have enough energy to keep them!

We only have so much will-power to go around, and it's just so typical of the time of year to load up on ambitious goals the way we load up on junk-food and presents. Only us Americans would try to fight gluttony with gluttony!

But me, I find I spend lots of energy and will-power doing stuff that sucks--stuff that sucks for my health, my mind, my community, my planet. I literally struggle, stress and strive to do stuff that makes me and everybody else unhappy! As sage Chuck Pallaniuk puts it in Fight Club: 

"we buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like."

 

And if you're like me, you also do stuff you hate, with energy you don't have, for reasons you're not even aware of.

So this year I hope to shuck off more of the muck that's using up will-power. I resolve to be less resolved. I'm setting the goal to give up on goals that aren't worth achieving. 

Cheers to 2014!