Do you have any New Year resolutions in mind? Any big changes you’d like to see happen in 2016? What is your approach to that whole thing, and what has your experience been in past years? Here’s a way of framing this tradition that you may find helpful: In our culture, the idea of making these “resolutions” — changes that we schedule to take effect immediately at midnight on January 1st, and then sustain indefinitely — is often treated with either an unhealthy degree of ambition and wishful thinking, or else cynicism and a sense of… “screw it.” A wonderful teacher and mentor of mine, Jon Barbieri, identifies the problematic aspects of resolution-making, and offers a different, more sane way of thinking about the prospect of “self-improvement.” The approach that he offers is based on harnessing the energy of renewal that comes along with the changing of the calendar year, and with that, embarking on a journey with the intention of gradually shifting the habitual patterns that bring about the results that we find to …