Change Your Life in the New Year
Dr. Deepak Chopra with some advice for a new you in the new year
Dec. 27, 2007— -- With our bellies full of holiday cheer, many of us are looking for salvation in the new year. Salvation from ourselves and from our destructive habits. And who do we look to for comfort? Baby New Year, of course.
Every year, January brings with it a time-honored tradition. The resolution. But while some say New Year's resolutions are a waste of time and impractical, Deepak Chopra is not one of them. Appearing on ABC News NOW's "All Together NOW," the prolific author and founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing said that the new year is a good time to make resolutions. He just thinks our ideas about happiness are backward.
While most of us believe that weight loss, money or career success will bring happiness, Chopra says, "It's the other way around. If you're happy, you're likely to achieve all of the things that you want."
We want to change, that much is obvious. Just witness the billions of dollars we spend each year on dieting programs and the inability to find a free treadmill at the gym in January. But few of us stick with the program and come February we're right back on the couch where we started.
Lets face it, the resolutions we make are often artifice. We pretend we're going to make a positive change in our lives but in the back of our minds we're resigned to our fate. If you're like me you even start making your excuses in December (the only project I ever seem to get a head start on).
So why is true happiness so elusive for many of us and what can we do to effect real change in our lives?
Chopra's latest book, due out in February, is "The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore." While he speaks about religion and spirituality, Chopra is quick to point out that scientists have studied the human condition in an effort to find out what truly makes us happy.
"It turns out that our conditions of life do not influence happiness that much. So if you win the lottery…you'll be happy for the next few months but in a year from now you'll be as happy or unhappy as you were before you won the lottery," says Chopra. It's an emotional elasticity that holds true for tragedy as well, according to Chopra.
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