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Rev. Marisol Caballero
January 26, 2014
Many of us are already mired in self-judgment over our “failure” to keep our New Year’s resolutions. What do our Sources have to say about goal-setting and personal criticism?
Call to worship
As we enter into worship, put away the pressures of the world that ask us to perform, to take up masks, to put on brave fronts.
Silence the voices that ask you to be perfect.
This is a community of compassion and welcoming.
You do not have to do anything to earn the love contained within these walls.
You do not have to be braver, smarter, stronger, better than you are in this moment to belong here, with us.
You only have to bring the gift of your body,
no matter how able;
your seeking mind,
not matter how busy;
your animal heart,
no matter how broken.
Bring all that you are, and all that you love, to this hour together. Let us worship together.
Erika A. Hewitt
Reading “It’s Time Somebody Told You”
by Barbara Merritt
Now I’m not one for “affirmations.” Saying something doesn’t make it so. But recently a dear friend of mine read to me some affecting lines from an unknown author. They went something like this:
It’s time somebody told you that you are lovely, good, and real; that your beauty can make hearts stand still. It’s time somebody told you how much they love and needyou, how much your spirit helped set them free, how your eyes shinefull oflight. It’s time somebody told you.
As these words were read, I found a complex internal process going on within me. I was touched, unnerved, and a little sad that I hadn’t heard these words as a child. But mostly I became conscious of enormous resistance. Something in me was not ready to let these words in. It could be that I was not quite ready to hear such positive feedback. Maybe it wasn’t yet the right time to receive love and affection. But apparently, at least one friend thought that now was a good time to attend to what is essential and life-giving. Often we are too busy, too distracted, to listen to what our loved ones have to tell us. They offer all kinds of radical and startling opinions about our place in the divine scheme of things. Messages that I can almost hear include:
“It’s time someone told you that with all your flaws and weaknesses, you are an extraordinary person, well-worth knowing. No one- especially not God or the people who love you- expects you to live without making mistakes or stumbling occasionally. It’s time that you looked at your own life with more kindness, gentleness, and mercy.”
“It’s time someone told you that you are not on this earth to impress anyone, to dazzle us with your success, to conquer all obstacles with your competence, or to offer one brilliant solution after another. We are happy you are here with the rest of us struggling souls. We are all striving to be as faithful as we can be to the truth that we understand. No more is required.”
“It’s time someone told you that the work you do to increase your capacity to love and to pay more attention is more important than any other activity. As you advance closer to what is ultimately true and life-giving, you bless others.”
“It’s time somebody told you how absolutely beautiful your laughter is. You bring joy into our world.”
Just possibly, messages of love and acceptance have always been circulating in our midst. The hard part is not seeking out these positive and creative affirmations that remind us that we are loved. The hard part is taking in the love.
It’s time someone told us all that we are valued and infinitely worthwhile.
And it’s time we believed it.
Sermon “Resolution Disillusion”
At the beginning of last week, my fiance and I dutifully drove directly from work to the gym, changed into stretchy fabrics, and climbed the stairs to the yoga studio.
The last time I had been in that room, I was hard to find a spot for my mat, but this time, we had a run of the place and could stretch out as much as we wanted. The instructor looked around the room and declared, “Well, I guess the resolutions are over!”
I must admit to a bit of a self-important satisfaction at that moment. I am a recovering overachiever who likes to think of herself as a good student. But, I am not sure if it was, necessarily, any amount of steady devotion to a champagnedriven, December 31st promise to myself that had brought me to the gym after a long day and an even longer week. It was, more likely, the thought of wedding day photos that are a mere nine months away that has kept me in sneakers this far into January. It’s not so much that I’m a diligent student, it turns out I’m just vain!
And now, I had my moment of raw honesty, so I’d like to ask those of you who made some sort of New Year’s resolution to raise your hands. Don’t worry, I won’t be asking if you’ve stuck to them.
I nearly always make New Year’s resolutions. And, according to a study published in the Journal ofCUnical Psychology, I’m in good company with 50% of Americans also claiming to make these nearly unattainable goals. The most popular are exercise, weight loss, smoking cessation, “better money management and debt reduction.” Mainly easy stuff like that…
But, unattainable, you ask? Yes, if the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, 88% of those who make such resolutions will fail. Looking back on my many years of resolution-setting, I would guess that my failure percentage is higher than 88. And, wanting to have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve truly followed through on a promise to myself, and having wanted to not only succeed but also exceed my goal, I always end up feeling as if I am somehow deficient. Don’t worry, by now I’m great at talking myself off of that ledge, but I wanted to say this because I think that this is a fairly common human experience.
Neurologists are saying that there is science behind our inability to follow through on resolutions. The part of our brain that handles willpower is our prefrontal cortex, which sits behind our forehead. According to Jonah Lehrer, Neuroscientist and author of How We Decide and Proust was a Neuroscientist, this area of the brain has come far since our knuckle-dragging days, but it probably hasn’t expanded enough during evolution to meet the challenges of the 21st Century and handle the self-judgment and pressure that goes along with creating New Year’s Resolutions.
We know, through science that this prefrontal cortex is already working quite hard at any given moment on any given day, as it is responsiqle for “keeping us focused, handling short-term memory and solving abstract problems.” He says, “asking it to lose weight (one of the most common New Year’s resolutions] is often asking it to do one thing too many.” “The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak,” as they say …
Most of us, myself included, are so mired in self-judgment that we hear such things and think, “Excuses, excuses. So the part of the brain that controls willpower has its hands full with other tasks, somebody call the waaa-mbulance- waa, waa, waa, waa …” Ok, maybe that’s just me. Maybe I binge-watch Modern Family a little too much while snacking on sugary foods instead of eating fruit salad as a reward after a hard workout at the gym.
Or, it’s also possible that I am being hard on myself, should listen to science, and reframe the whole experience. Again, I reckon I’m not alone here. These thoughts sound silly and irrational when spoken aloud, but I would venture to guess that most of our internal dialogue would.
Lehrer acknowledges that, “There’s something unsettling about this scientific model of willpower. Most of us assume that self-control is largely a character issue, and that we would follow through on our New Year’s resolutions if only we had a bit more discipline. But… research suggests that willpower itself is inherently limited, and that our January promises fail in large part because the brain wasn’t built for success.”
That last sentence blew my mind. The brain isn’t built for success? Then, what are we all doing? This makes me want to grow out a beard and never wear shoes again, or at least never have to tie the shoelaces when I do.
Psychology professor Peter Herman echoes this. “(He] and his colleagues have identified what they call the “false hope syndrome,” which means their resolution is significantly unrealistic and out of alignment with their internal view of themselves. This principle reflects that of making positive affirmations. When you make positive affirmations about yourself that you don’t really believe, the positive affirmations not only don’t work, they can be damaging to your self-esteem.”
So, the lesson is, we should significantly lower our expectations of ourselves so that we aren’t sad when we fail to achieve such goals? I’m, sure that, to a room full of Unitarian Universalists, who are typically high-achieving goal-setters, this sounds like the sort of attitudes that other countries laugh about when they caricature Americans as an emotionally fragile, ego-centered culture that insists on celebrating mediocrity- the inventors of the” everyone-gets-an-award -simply- for- participating” blue ribbon.
Thankfully, the researchers didn’t stop there. They haven’t all “tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.” Instead, many have saved the world (or, at least, this congregation) from such a fate, as well. Lehrer insists that the prefrontal cortex can be strengthened much like a muscle. All right, I’ll add that to my growing list of “problem areas” to tone up! Not necessarily. He suggests that, if we approach goals in bite-sized, attainable pieces, instead of creating huge and sweeping, abstract goals, we have a better chance at success, as, “practicing mental discipline in one area, such as posture, can also make it easier to resist Christmas cookies.” When our willpower brain-muscle is stronger, we become more skillful at exercising willpower. We create brand-new neural pathways.
An editorial in Psychology Today offers practical tips:
1. Focus on one resolution, rather several;
2. Set realistic, specific goals. Losing weight is not a specific goal. Losing 10 pounds in 90 days would be;
3. Don’t wait till New Year’s Eve to make resolutions. Make it a year long process, every day;
4. Take small steps. Many people quit because the goal is too big requiring too big a step all at once;
5. Have an accountability buddy, someone close to you that you have to report to;
6. Celebrate your success between milestones. Don’t wait the goal to be finally completed;
7. Focus your thinking on new behaviors and thought patterns. You have to create new neural pathways in your brain to change habits;
8. Focus on the present. What’s the one thing you can do today, right now, towards your goal?
9. Be mindful. Become physically, emotionally and mentally aware of your inner state as each external event happens, moment-by-moment, rather than living in the past or future.
And finally, don’t take yourself so seriously. Have fun and laugh at yourself when you slip, but don’t let the slip hold you back from working at your goal.
Science is great. And, learning about how our own brains work against us, setting us up for New Year’s resolution (and goal-setting in general) failure does help me to forgive myself, to a degree.
But we are more than just our intellectual understanding of our physiology. We are spiritual beings that, underneath the vanity and internalized societal pressure, have deep, unmet spiritual needs buried underneath each of our New Year’s resolutions. Underneath a goal of weight loss is usually the need to be loved and accepted just as we are. Underneath the goal of debt reduction may, be the spiritual need to demonstrate our love for others, as we desire to provide for our families and children’s future. And, underneath the goal of quitting damaging habits such as smoking may be the human spiritual need of reconciliation, as we hope to make right years of damage done.
One of the most difficult lessons for me to learn while a student chaplain in a hospital setting, and one I believe I will continue to learn and re-Iearn throughout my life, is the notion that, “whatever the situation, know that you are enough.” I rebelled with every fiber of my being against this. And yet, my professors would say, “It’s true. No matter how inadequate you might feel, no matter how much you believe that your presence in a situation is of little consequence. You are always enough. The authentic “you” that you bring is enough. It is enough because it is all that you can possibly be and do.” I still wonder about the truth in this, yet I know that most of what that heavily-accented, six-foot-something German “Yoda,” my supervisor, Rev. Birte Beuck, said contained wisdom that I will spend the rest of my life unpacking. It certainly didn’t feel like I was enough when I stood at the bedside of a family whose one-year old baby girl had just died in their arms after several months’ hospitalization, and there I was, unable to speak the indigenous language of their tribe and culture that they had left behind in the mountains of Mexico for a better life in the United States.
The notion of Loving-kindness, of extending love to oneself and others by way of practicing kindness and empathy, is one that is found in many religious traditions.
In the Jewish tradition, the Hebrew word, chesed, appears in Psalm 47, which can be translated as, “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord.” In Christianity, we are taught the notion of agape, the highest form of love, the kind of love that God can express for creation by ultimate sacrifice and the kind of love we can express for one another when committed to caring about the well being of others.
But, we are perhaps most familiar with the notion of lovingkindness as it comes to us from Westernized Buddhism. Meg leads us, most weeks, in a much-beloved Meta-meditation of lovingkindness in which we extend kindness first to ourselves, then to someone we love, and then to someone “for whom we hold a resentment.” I was not aware, until recently, that “Meta” is Pali for “lovingkindness” and that this practice comes to us from the Theravadin Buddhist tradition. In its traditional form, the meditation ends with the extension of lovingkindness toward all sentient beings.
When Meg leads this, she often says that extending lovingkindness toward someone for whom we hold a resentment is typically he most difficult of the three, and yes, forgiveness of others is hard stuff, but there are some days in which extending lovingkindness toward myselfis the most difficult. It’s that tricky self-forgiveness thing, again. It’s that wall that we hit when we believe that we are not enough.
My friend, Natalie Briscoe, recently modeled this so well for me with her hilarious and poignant online post about self-forgiveness and the extension of lovingkindness to oneself. She said, “Today while I was eating lunch, and Ian was screaming in my face, throwing food, grabbing off my plate, pulling my hair with ketchup hands, trying to climb me like a tree, and pooping in his pants, I recalled an old story about two Buddhist monks who were observing a business man eating and reading the paper at the same time. The first monk asked, “which is he doing, reading the paper or eating?” And the second monk said, “He is doing neither of them well” And then I thought that if that story were true, I would punch those monks in the face with my ketchuppy, poopy hands and say, “I can do lots of things well, thank you! I’m a mom!”
New Year’s resolutions are all about becoming more like the kind of person we want to be, what we admire about ourselves and in others. I am not sure that we should take the free pass that science may seem to hand us and never set such goals. After all, what is the point of life besides walking humbly on this journey toward living, a tiny step each day, more fully into our shared humanity and learning from our stumbles and the obstacles we encounter along the way?
What I’m learning is that, instead of a boot-camp type, drill sergeant approach to meeting my goals, I might just try a lovingkindness approach. Maybe extending lovingkindness to ourselves, the thought that “I am enough” should top our resolution list each year.
Barbara Merritt suggests in this morning’s reading that, “It’s time someone told us all that we are valued and infinitely worthwhile.” Maybe we are that someone. Yikes!
And, as I’m stretching into a pose I am convinced I will spend the remainder of my uncomfortable life in, I look up and across the room at a woman with a serene countenance, who looks as if she naturally falls into this pose when she sits down to read a book, and I think, “This is absolutely nuts. What am I thinking?” The yoga instructor walks past me and says, “Remember to breathe. Perfecto!” And I realize, I am enough.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776
