On the first of January each year, it is safe to say that billions of people make New Year's resolutions. Perhaps you are one of these individuals who long to take control of their destiny: to be more kind, less lazy, better disciplined, or to not be as selfish and self-centered.

But I would assert that every year, even as the total number of people who make these resolutions increases (due to growth in our population), there is also a steady decline in the number of people who hold out any real hope in their own powers to further perfect themselves. And it isn't that their spirit isn't willing; only that they have slipped down the steep path before them too many times.

The truth is, most of us fall into both of these categories! We want to change our self but find it to be intractable -- with wants of its own that seem to easily outweigh our wishes to be self-determining. And so it is that we gradually reach that place in our lives where we recognize that simply coming up with more wishes is a waste. If we are to change, something else is needed.

With this honest assessment of our present situation in mind, let's start by gathering the facts such as this one all-important idea that follows. Through it we will learn what is possible and what is not: Change does not take place tomorrow. We do not lose weight, develop our art, or mysteriously become more kind or conscientious an hour from now. Either we change ourselves in the moment, or not at all. This is a challenging concept to grasp because our present mind, the way in which we see things take place around us, shows us that effect follows cause in a perceptible stream of time.

Madison Avenue advertising capitalizes on this, our perception of "before and after." We are sold the idea of becoming what we wish to be as time unfolds. In one sense, this is true. We do see the effects of our efforts to perfect ourselves appear before us in the passage of time. Yet too often we also witness these same changes evaporate as time moves on. We need to understand why.

These visible, physical manifestations of self-change are themselves merely the effects of what are invisible, spiritual principles. And without coming to understand these higher principles, then self-change, if it occurs at all, is either accidental or temporary - the effect of some passing desires whose energies, once spent, return us right back to the shape of our former self. If we would do better, we must know better, beginning with the following Higher Knowledge that one must have before it's possible to make any resolutions with any reliability: It is our attention that produces and empowers change in us. Said in slightly different words, those things that manifest themselves in our lives are what we have given our attention to.

For example, if our attention is given over to angry emotions, then soon this same attention is swimming in a dark sea of negative thoughts that serve only to justify the growing waves of rage within us. The inevitable outcome of this kind of captured attention is an outburst or attack upon someone. We manifest the misery we make through unconscious attention. It is a Law.

So, in returning to our theme of making some resolve that we won't get angry anymore, or that we will help others instead of hurting them, this much should be clear: Until we learn what it means to be in conscious command of our attention, our disappointments and heartaches must continue. Again, this is all under Law. Now, to this knowledge we must add a few more fascinating facts.

The power of attention is, in itself, strangely indiscriminate. What this means is that our attention, of itself, cares neither for what it alights upon, nor what it calls into creation through its power to manifest. For proof of this fact, we need only watch for five minutes the scattered operations of our own mind. We attend to virtually any thought or feeling flying through us, providing that it supplies us with some particular sense of self. Our attention to these vagrant states increases their vitality. Their growing strength only serves to deepen our unconscious identification with their presence -- and so we produce our own punishments. But this is another story to be told at a later date.

What is important now - if we wish to elevate the content and quality of our lives - is to understand how to take conscious command of our own attention. Until we can realize this power the only kind of changes there can be for us will revolve around where our attention accidentally lands, and then what we are obligated to go through as a result of this relationship. The missing key to commanding this little-understood power called attention is our power of intention. Here is why: Our intention (alone) gives direction to our attention.

Now let's put these ideas together: What we manifest, what we do in life and become as individuals, is the secret result of intention, attention, and manifestation. If we take the first letters of these three Principles and put them together we find the words: "I AM." Which brings us to our last point as to why it is that so many of our resolutions end up as shipwrecks - as broken hopes on the reefs of regret.

Please think through this next idea until you can see not only the truth hidden in it, but also how this same truth applies to why self-transformation has been so elusive. Here it is: No intention of ours, regardless of how noble or true, is any more powerful than our ability to remember it. Apart from its pure logic, this one idea is filled with spiritual gold. The reason why we do not change, or otherwise make real our resolve to rise above who we have been, is that we are always forgetting ourselves. We go to sleep spiritually. We doze in dreams of better times to come - of some happier self to be - at the expense of being awake to what is our one real need: To be New Now.

The cost of our inattention is incalculable, not because of what happens to us outwardly as a result of this distracted self, but because of what does not happen to us inwardly. Certainly changes still take place in us, but these are accidental. These accidents produce chaos and conflict and such states are the seeds of disintegration.

We must add one last note to this study to help serve us in our resolve to rise above our former self: Whenever we can be awake to ourselves and remember our right intention, the rest of the work is done for us. This is spiritual Law as well. Our intention to be mindful, patient, honest, disciplined, whatever our higher wish may be, places our attention, unmistakably, upon our new aim. And it is this same intention, the upward direction of it, that reveals those dark forces at work within us set against our wish and that seek to drag us down. To see the whole of these wonders being described is to realize their powers.

Our attention manifests our intention Now, even as our intention directs (and protects) our attention, keeping us from forgetting ourselves and manifesting what is unwanted. When these Principles are active within us, we no longer have to resort to dreams about self-change because instead of waiting to become what cannot be, we do the conscious inner work of being what we intend. Can you see the immense inner difference in these two possibilities? Of course our work to be conscious, to have real intention, and pay true attention is difficult! But compare this path to unconsciously being run through endless unintended changes. Suddenly the practice of this special interior work becomes equivalent to a walk in a sun-filled park.

Now, for practical purposes, let's bring these ideas into our everyday world. To begin, take just one intention (of yours) and keep it before you at all times. Don't attempt something too big - or innocuous - like "staying awake" or "being all things to all people." Such lofty aims are not attainable at our present level and you will only slip into harmful states of imagination.

Keep your intention simple to start. For example, make it your intention to be patient with others who displease you; or intend to say, "Yes!" to life whenever negativity in you wants to cry out, "No!" Perhaps make it your aim to pray without ceasing: To hold your attention without wavering on the remembrance of God by recalling repeatedly some feature of the Divine.

Of course such choices are personal, but no matter what intention you make, keep it before you - alive and present - at all times. And know this next fact to be both sure and kind: We will fail (often!) at keeping our newly intended wish - but this kind of "failure" will change our very essence, something our worldly successes have not been able to do!

Find out! Remember yourself and your wish for Real Life. Work at keeping your spiritual intention before you -- whatever roads you may walk -- and watch how God watches over you, seeing to it that you grow in all that is Good.

Guy Finley is the acclaimed author of more than 30 books and audio programs on the subject of self-realization, several of which have become international best sellers. His popular works, published in 16 languages, are widely endorsed by doctors, professionals, and religious leaders of all denominations. Among many others, his popular titles include: The Secret of Letting Go, Design Your Destiny, The Lost Secrets of Prayer, Apprentice of the Heart, and Let Go and Live in the Now.

To learn more about the work of Guy Finley and his non-profit Life of Learning Foundation, visit http://www.guyfinley.org for a wealth of free helpful information, free audio and video downloads, and to request your FREE Self-Improvement Starter Kit.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com