Make the best and only real New Year’s Resolution, this year. 

It's one resolution you won't want to drop. 

New Year's Resolutions are like diets. They often are diets. They're all about taking stock in this stream of life, and trying to make a change in direction.

That much is all well and good...but they can actually be unhealthy if they're founded on not being friends with who we already are. To change, we need to first befriend ourselves. We can't change, and stick with that change, if a change is made out of self-aggression or self-hate.

The only changes that stick? Those born out of caring for self and others. Because then there's no blowback, no pent-up hunger for whatever is being self-deprived. So instead we're making a change out of our whole selves.

Now, before another month (let alone year) goes by, let us commit to finally, actually, fully befriending ourselves. ⁠ ⁠

Maitri is the foundation of a life fully lived.⁠ Ring in the New Year—your new year—with best-selling author Waylon Lewis, founder of Elephant Journal.