What a start to the new year…
If there’s one thing 2025 has taught us so far, it’s to expect the unexpected. So if you’re a little behind on your resolve to ‘fix’ what’s ‘broken’ after the month we just had, there’s still plenty of time left to tackle your list. But what if you could approach this business of resolutions a little differently…and more powerfully?
See, I’m willing to bet most of the things on your list – if not all – stem from bad habits that you want to change. Habits that you adopted as part of an illusion that your mood could be regulated by something outside of you.
Think of it like this. We feel depressed, unhappy, angry, bored, stressed…and it doesn’t feel good. To change that feeling, we reach for something outside of ourselves. We might eat a second piece of cake, have a third glass of wine, binge watch Netflix (I won’t judge if you do that with Stutzthough), the list goes on.
It’s a belief in the illusion that these external things will regulate our mood that keeps resolutions flowing year after year. But a resolution won’t change anything. Why? I’ll sum it up with this from Lessons for Living: “Human beings can never be made happy by the material world. We are spiritual beings and can be emotionally healthy only when we are in touch with a higher world.”
It’s that higher world – I call it the Life Force – that’s the important distinction here. You can make as many resolutions as you want, but if the direction is coming from your mind, you’re not going to experience lasting change. You must activate the Life Force for that. And while it’s not going to tell you what to do, it will give you direction, a way forward that’s in your highest good.
“That’s all fine”, I hear you saying, “but how do I activate the Life Force, Phil?”
It requires a willingness to embrace uncertainty and sustained action. Two things we’re not too good at as humans. You’ll learn about the Life Force Pyramid in my upcoming book, True and False Magic. It’s kind of like a blueprint for strengthening your connection with Life Force. In the meantime, here’s another Tool that’s incredibly helpful when you want to create change. It connects you with the Life Force by putting you into a place I call transmutational motivation.
- Begin by feeling the heavy demoralized feeling that causes you to want to change something. Focus on it and tell yourself you’re going to change it into something positive.
- Imagine that above your head there’s a powerful flow of energy, like a jet stream.
- Now picture yourself taking a specific action that represents forward motion in your life. It can be something you’ve been avoiding doing, perhaps a thing that’s on your list of resolutions.
- Put the specific picture above your head in the jet stream. Now fly straight up into this picture by feeling yourself taking that action.
- As you feel yourself rise, sense that the world around you falls away. There’s nothing except the action itself. Rise high enough to enter the picture.
- Once inside, tell yourself that you have a purpose. You will feel a powerful energy.
Put this into practice often and watch what happens.
