Sometimes society perplexes me…. For instance, I have never really understood why November is about thanks, December is about giving, and then January is all about ourselves. Shouldn’t the thanks and the giving, the gratitude and the generosity, continue through into our newly marked calendar year? Shouldn’t exchanging with others extend into these professed new beginnings? Wouldn’t it be better if self centeredness took a back seat as we individuals in and of a larger collective embark on a new twelve month journey?
The typical New Year resolution craze focuses on endless lists of things you can resolve to do to make you, yourself better in January. These usually concentrate on weight loss, torturous diets, painful fast styled cleanses, extreme exercise, and expensive beauty routines. Yet for the two months leading up to the new year, also known as the month after the last day of December, we have had a polar opposite focus — one of and for others rather than of and for ourselves. Why the hairpin turn, and more importantly, what does it truly imply? Nothing good, I would argue.
You see, in the Tibetan theories of yoga RETOX is based on, there is an overarching concept of correlations. Correlations relate actions you take directly to future experiences in your life. They connect everything you do, think and say to specific events, incidents, and feelings in the future. The most direct, palatable example is if you need money, you must give it away to someone else first. Taking it a level further, if you want to be beautifully radiant, you need to be patient with others (pretty sure that’s what my mother has going on). In doing so, the correlations inherently bind you with those surrounding you, and create the framework for the body, mind and life you experience.
So if we go into January and all we are focusing on is ourselves — our weight, skin, diet, career, schedule, and on and on — we are, via the logic explained above, actually not bettering ourselves at all, as the instant gratification of, upon, and for me, me, me does not correlate with the results the you is probably searching for.
The thing is, just like you are not going to find wealth unless you give away, or happiness unless you spread it to others, you are not going to get better if you do not help someone else get better.
It thus becomes impossible to resolve to better just yourself….You must better others. We must better others.
So this New Year try and correlate new beginnings with a renewed perspective of how you construct your you and your world, and perhaps instead of making yourself crazy on 1,000 calories a day, double down boutique fitness classes, and a limited social schedule, simply, yet grandly, resolve to do something for others, just like you did in November and December, and precisely like you want someone to do for you. That’s how you can become everything you dream of and gain everything you hope for not only this year, but for years to come. That’s RETOX.
Originally published at medium.com