It's hard to believe, but New Years Eve will be here before you know it, and besides popping the cork on a bottle of vintage champagne, and tossing the confetti in the air, it will be time once again to make those resolutions.

What is it about New Year's Resolutions? I keep telling myself how ridiculous this ritual is, and as I look back to resolutions past, I have to acknowledge that I keep making the same ones and over and over. But, I have to admit that the idea of not making New Years Resolutions is like ostrich behavior; head in the sand being completely oblivious to what needs changing.

Most of us bite off new goals in large chunks. We want to make that big lifestyle change. The one which will make everything else right in the world. "If I am at my ideal weight, life will be perfect in every way. I will never suffer again." Not only do we say this, but we can see this in our minds eye. We are sitting in a plush restaurant looking absolutely perfect,, having dinner with a charming handsome partner, and enjoying intimate conversation by candlelight.. Our work life is perfect, as well as our children. Even the dog has taken on a new life. If we have been a smoker, we see ourselves running freely down the road, full of breathe with no exertion, looking as if we had just run out of a popular sports magazine. As we examine our daydreams, it is no wonder we seem to fall short, see ourselves as failures one more time, and move back to our old comfortable lifestyles.

There are ways, however, to achieve these dreams. The destination remains the same, but the route and way of travel changes dramatically. For those of you who might enjoy this experiment of diversity, I'd like to suggest a new resolution this year. Let's resolve to move out of automatic pilot, into a lifestyle of awareness and mindfulness. Don't think for a minute you will be putting aside your resolution to stop smoking, or to reach your ideal weight. Just the opposite. When we choose mindful living, it becomes much easier to change these habits.

Most of us live our life on automatic pilot. Just like a plane which has been programmed to fly from New York to Paris, we wake up in the morning with our programming all in place, and basically we just go along for the ride. We move through our routine tasks, not really aware or awake to what we are doing, and proceed to react to whatever new comes across our path in a pattern or behavior that perhaps was placed in our subconscious mind many years ago. Maybe it was useful then, and not so useful now, but even if it continues to be useful, there may be better choices for us to utilize. More than often, we are completely out of touch with what we are saying or doing. " I can't believe I did that", or " Did I say that?" " What did I do that for?" "I keep repeating the same mistakes over and over." "I can't change." "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." "I'll never be able to reach my goals. I keep getting in my own way!" These statements are just a drop in the bucket of evidence of "Automatic Pilot Living."

When we practice mindfulness, or awareness we learn to focus in the moment we are living. Much of the time our mind is more in the past or the future than it is in the present. Unawareness can dominate the mind in any moment and can affect everything we do. It's like living in some dream state, or just being half awake. We learn to utilize tools to do this systematically, and re-train the brain to be an ally in this adventure. For most of us our brains are like employees who aren't working up to their expectations. They have not been trained to do their job well, and even if they had received some training in the past, it is like not taking your CEU's and staying up to date.

There are many health giving benefits to the practice of staying in the moment. When are thoughts are predominating our awake state, our brain waves are going very fast. In this state we are producing a large quantity of stress chemicals. These chemicals are responsible for making important changes in our body, many of them disrupting important systems, such as blood pressure, heart rate, metabolism, blood sugar levels, gastro-intestinal functioning including digestion, endocrine function, and perhaps most importantly, the functioning of our neurological system. When we practice mindfulness, the brain waves slow down appreciably, as do the production of stress hormones and the body can become balanced once again.

When we have an over-active thought process, it is very difficult to concentrate, make decisions, be highly creative, and get break-through ideas. It is like being in the middle of a very large parade, and not being able to find your way back to the curb. This state works to increase the emotions, which follow the active thought process very closely. Some familiar emotional visitors include anxiety, fear, depression, helplessness, hopelessness, intolerance, and the like. Once the emotions take hold, and it doesn't take very long, the body sensations are not far behind. This can all occur in a split second. If we are not working with mindfulness techniques, we may not even notice the beginning of the build-up of tension in our body. Often we do not notice until our body is screaming with pain, perhaps a migraine headache, backache, stomach ache, or extreme fatigue. With this amount of stored tension, it is more difficult to bring the mind and body back to balance. Generally at this point, we go for some artificial means of changing the body sensations and the emotions. Some of these include food, especially high carbohydrates or pure sugar, caffeine, medications, and alcohol. While one may feel better temporarily, the effect is short-lived, and a pattern of dependency can be developed. This cycle is only one step away from serious breakdown, either from a compromised immune system, emotional collapse, or the development or worsening of a serious disease state.

 The tools of mindfulness are really quite simple, but often not easy. The reason for this is that we seem to find it very difficult to practice something called "non-doing", and this is the crux of the problem. So, we turn the crux into a mindful experience, and utilize the very problem to help us achieve health. We do this by noticing and labeling. It goes something like this, I am sitting doing my mindfulness work, and I notice that I am very restless, and my mind is telling me that this is rather stupid for me to be sitting doing nothing and watching my breath when I have a long list of things I need to do. I simply notice these thoughts, my emotions and I label them. I already know through my mindfulness education that I am not my thoughts, nor my emotions, and I can just observe them as if they were a part of the parade. I just need to remember not to get into the parade. If I find myself involved in my thoughts or emotions, I very gently notice this and return to my focus of my breathe.

No matter what our goal, we bring mindfulness to everything we do. Most of us never really focus on our eating practices. Most eating is done unconsciously. Have you ever had the experience of sitting down in front of the t.v. with a bowl of popcorn, or chips and not noticing until you were at the bottom of the bag? It is not difficult to relate to this. Sometimes people don't remember what they ate at their last meal. Another common occurrence is putting more food in your mouth, when you still have not finished chewing or swallowing what preceded the next handful. These are examples of mindless eating.

Over 75% of the people in this country eat an imbalanced diet for their biochemistry. These diets are very high in sugar and other high glycemic foods which trigger certain hormones. These hormones not only work to store fat, and keep the body from burning fat, but over-stimulate other body systems, particularly the nervous system, keeping the mind an body at a high level of stress. Unless dietary changes take place, the mindbody experiences a rather low level of life, which is often very uncomfortable. Some of these discomforts include mood swings, poor concentration, poor memory storage and recall, low creativity, a feeling of anxiety or panic, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breathe, headaches, stomach ailments, and a variety of ills far too numerous to mention. This is a perfect example of how our eating habits control the entire mindbody system. When we learn the facts about sugar and glycemic indexes, we are able to be mindful of just what we put in our mouths. Food and non-foodstuffs are chemicals, and change our biochemistry based on our genetic factors. There is nothing more important than to be mindful in this department.

Most of our day is spent in our thought processes, mainly in the past and future. It is similar to spending all day at the cinema, and the results are about the same. Little gets done. When people mention they have problems with procrastination, you can just about guess where they spend most of their time.

Learning to move out of the thought process is a very important mindful activity. Part of this training is achieved in our formal practice of meditation, but we continue to work with our thoughts during the day. We ask our brain to make us aware when we are captivated by our thought processes. In other words, to wake us up so we can move out of this dream state, and back to reality. We do this with a simple wake-up call and then utilize the breath mechanism to let-go and refocus. This process is carried over to emotional and body sensation management. Just noticing, waking up, letting-go with the breathe.

As we get better and better at mindfulness practice, we notice how the fabric of our life is changing on several levels. We are much more awake for our lives as they are unfolding, and able to make choices to influence this process. It is no longer like being on a run away horse with no reins. We not only have those reins, but the horse is trotting is a beautiful balanced rhythm, and we are a part of that happening.