I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of New Year's Resolutions.

I do enjoy sitting down at the end of every year and reflecting on what I did and why and how I would like to do things differently in the coming year.

But I'm not into the traditional goal-setting thing: exercise 3 times a week, eat 3 healthy meals per day, go to bed earlier.

That's not to say I wouldn't like to set these kinds of goals -- IF I could/would do them -- but I can't. Or won't. Or don't.

The place I get hung up is in the whole idea of Goals, capital G. Philosophically, I get uncomfortable making too many decisions about where my life "Should" be going. If I had set specific goals and kept my nose to the grindstone to achieve them, I would be in a totally different place than I find myself now. I arrived at this most interesting place in my life by a rather circuitous route and an openness to new opportunities and possibilities. And I'm satisfied with where I am. (For now...who knows what else is coming?)

Even though I'm not the type to map out how I want  my life to go, I do have ideas for the near-term about what I need to do to progress on my current projects and ideas. And I certainly have ideas about the kind of person I want to be Becoming.

So over the years I have developed alternatives to New Year's Resolutions that fit better with who and how I am.

What has all this got to do with neurofeedback??

Well, for example, this past year I was noting that neurofeedback sessions on myself combined with regular heart coherence practice seemed to be producing a strong increase in my awareness of what I'll call "internal urgings" -- a sense of what I actually do want to be doing.

Here are some examples of my "urgings":

Typically, I would create a to-do list every morning and methodically work (or not, more likely ;-)) my way through the items based on some kind of prioritization process. But I've started becoming more alert to inner "urgings" to work on certain activities. If I ignore the urging and stay On Target, I'm way less productive than if I listen to the urging and work on that project (or write an article or make the call or whatever).

I like the idea of eating organic, nutritious, non-toxified food. But I'm also usually in a hurry at meal time or blissfully unaware that it's meal time until I'm Really Hungry. So I tend to get processed versions of what they want me to believe are healthy foods or I eat whatever is handy. But now I find that I'll get some direction from the urgings - the worst stuff won't appeal at all and I can be guided to the best available choice. I'll even be more motivated to make the effort to get something better than what's at hand -- and the motivation is a urging-following (hmmm...maybe it's like a healthy craving) rather than a self-disciplinary forcing.

I have historically not been a person who is well-connected brain-to-body. So for me to (1) notice the urgings, which are quite physical, and (2) to act on them is a jump forward. And I'm enjoying this new partnership very much.

So -- to make an explicit link to neurofeedback --

This is the kind of effect many people experience from neurofeedback training that concentrates on enhancing self-regulation rather than "goal-setting". So much so that some people find themselves giving up things that are bad for them without thinking too much about it.

The other link is that this kind of change tells us something about what neurofeedback is doing and why it is an effective tool for personal evolution. One of the key changes produced by neurofeedback is in our attention. Depending on what we need and how we train, neurofeedback can  widen or focus our attention.  In this case, it had the impact of  heightening my attention to signals I ordinarily don't attend to (or maybe strengthening those signals so they were within my attentional abilities).

Another key change neurofeedback produces is stronger connections between the brain and the body. In my case, this is a more subtle awareness of important information, but the physical effects neurofeedback can have on pain, headaches, hormonal function, etc. can be more dramatic.

But let's come back to planning for a new year.

If "goal-setting" is not the best way for everyone, why would one bother with "goals" at all?

Having goals  or intentions or projects (or whatever you're comfortable calling them) can be useful for a couple of reasons.

One is that having a notion of something you want to do or a way you want to be helps you to be more aware of how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours contribute to helping it happen (or not). Just as in the common example of planning to buy a certain brand of car (or anything else really) -- you start to observe that kind of car on the street, your eye may catch its name in a newspaper review, you notice when others are talking about cars, especially that brand.

Increased awareness then creates a more focused attention. Having set an intention to do something "primes" you to notice related information and to work on that activity over others. There are ways you can enhance both your awareness and your focused attention, but you do need to first establish the intention.

And if you are participating in neurofeedback training, you can also "prime" yourself to be more aware of changes in the direction of your intention and actually facilitate those changes occurring from both inside and outside.

So -- for this year, my intention is to practice following my urgings. I'm noticing when I am aware of them and I'm working at following them when I feel them. Of course, I'll continue my own neurofeedback sessions to help me live this intention  more easily...

And one of my urgings is to focus less on specific health issues and more on how neurofeedback can facilitate personal evolution. Stay tuned for more articles on what and how that can happen as well as the launch of my newsletter: Not Just Neurofeedback.

If you want to explore an approach other than traditional goal-setting, here are some alternatives that have arrived in my inbox:

New Year's Evolution: Choosing a Theme for 2007 with Cheryl Miller

Happy New You: A HeartMath article on  being true to your heart in 2007

Enjoy! Do you have new year "intentions" that are different from the traditional? Do share!