If you have found yourself making the same resolutions every year, then please stop doing it and ask yourself how much you really want it? The answer is going to be ‘not much’ if you have repeated the same ones – they are usually very general and revolve around worthy aims like losing weight, getting more exercise, taking care of your family better ..yadda, yadda, yadda.

It’s time for a change, make a resolution that you feel passionate about – not an ought or a should, but a resounding yes! My resolution for 2009 is to be responsible for my own actions as near to a 100 per cent as I can manage.  Taking responsibility is something that used to be automatic, but I see less and less of it in a culture where we are looking for someone to blame, or sue.

A spiritual teacher of mine once told me that responsibility was merely the ability to respond, and that gave me pause. When you see something you know is not right, have we lost the ability to respond appropriately or has it just been buried under a layer of the social fear that seems so much more prevalent now?  

I was on a train from London recently that was crowded and when I got on there was just one seat left and a man sitting in it with his bag next to him. I smiled and asked him to move it so I could sit down; he clearly didn’t want to and rather defensively said it was too heavy for him to lift onto the rack. I could have agreed, let it go and stood all the way to Brighton, or I could take responsibility for the fact that I didn’t have to support his selfish behaviour. So, what I did was to say ‘no problem, I will put it on the rack for you’ and lifted it up off the seat and looked for a space on the rack. There wasn’t one nearby so I called to a young man who was standing further down and asked if he would put it up for me, which he happily did and I got to sit down for the next 50 minutes. 

I could have blamed the man for his lack of consideration, and grumbled to myself as I stood there, but I decided to take responsibility and take action. It could have worked out differently, but that isn’t a reason not to act, it’s a reason to think it through. I wasn’t facing a knife wielding thug but a middle aged man who put his comfort and convenience above everyone else’s so my action was just my way of restoring some basic equity in the situation.

What would you have done, or where would you like to take more responsibility for your life?  What most upsets and aggravates you, and who do you blame? What would it take to stop blaming and start seeing how to fix it? 

Let’s have more compassion, trust and understanding and less fear, defensiveness and cynicism.  Couldn’t that be a great resolution for 2009?