Forget Your Resolutions; Track Your Future – Narrative Therapy Style.
I have watched the ceremony of the resolutions come and go through the years. I have done it – made a list of resolutions that I can stick to! Rarely has any of those resolutions lasted more than a month. In my opinion this ceremony serves two purposes – 1) It causes us to lose sight of our past successes and 2) It brings to the forefront the isolation we feel in our failure to keep our written goals. In short this ceremony appears to leave us powerless in the face of the many hidden traditions and cultural assumptions of western culture. Narrative therapy suggests otherwise.
What traditions and cultural assumptions of western culture do I speak of? Why the most insidious and sneaky ones of course – that of guilt, shame, fear, blame, anger, individualism, silence and many more… Each of these problems has a long history with the Ceremony of the Resolutions and each knows just what to do to derail any serious attempt to shake up their rule of our lives, our families’ lives and our cultural narratives.
As a narrative therapist I see it all the time. People love the idea – the resolution they reach for and they fail. Without the foundation they tumble and fall back into the sticky, sneaky ways of the problems. How do you find a new direction without setting yourself up for failure? Well it’s really simple – just notice that your already doing it.
Your future has already arrived in the present moment. Instead of creating a list of things you want to accomplish in the future, create a list of ways you are already accomplishing and some of things you want to do in the future. Say what? I mean it – sit down and try it right now.
Here are the rules –
1. Work on one goal at a time.
2. Create at list 20 items per goal.
3. Each list item should in some way represent your interest in the goal.
4. Each item can be fairly small and from any point in your life.
5. Once you have finished your list of 20 steps of progress towards your goal – now add five items that you will do in the future.
For example – Finish the Fairy Tales Forever Series
• Started the series in 1993 over 21 years ago…
• Renamed it from “Fairy Tales for Children of Single Parents” to “Fairy Tales Forever in 1999.”
• Have recorded three CD’s of the 7 – Peter and Myia,The Fairy War and Atlantis – Treachery of Kings.
• Planned out all 7 hours of the 7 CD’s.
• Transcribed the first CD.
• Have created and lost a master note book on the other 4 CD’s.
• Have recreated and lost again another master notebook on the 4 CD’s.
• Told the first 3 CD’s in my town of Yellow Springs in 2008.
• etc…
Example of the next five things….
1. Look for the old copy of the master notes.
2. Recreate the master notes.
3. Record the next CD of stories (Disk 4 – The Library of Alexandria).
4. etc…
For the 10% of you who like to make assumptions – no, I did not say stop making goals. I said start noticing how much progress you have started making toward your goals. Stop noticing how far you have to go to make your goals. There is tendency to feed the problems in our culture and by following the above method you will avoid this and just build toward your stated goal.
I am asking you to write your own story and then finish it. Not the whole story just the story around this one goal in your life and then write the next chapter in that story or at least plan out the next chapter. Isn’t that how books are written – one chapter at a time?
Applied Storytelling, Healing Storytelling, Narrative Therapy, Personal Oral Narrative | Brother Wolf | 
January 3, 2015 5:33 pm
