A Different Kind of Resolution
Earlier this week, my son asked me a question that caught me by surprise.
“Mum, if there was something about me you could change, what would it be?”
I asked him what he meant.
“Well,” he said, “I really want to better myself. I want to know what I should be working on. And I’ve also noticed how difficult it is to change.”
Coming from a teenager, this felt quietly extraordinary. My heart swelled with love and awe at the depth of self-awareness in his question - a recognition not only of the desire to grow, but of the complexity of growth itself.
So instead of answering with a trait or a correction, I shared something I’ve learned through Integral Coaching, Tantra, and my own lived experience.
Perfection, I told him, isn’t about meeting a particular standard. It isn’t about becoming “better” in the way our culture so often implies.
Perfection is being exactly where you are.
Not because where you are is the destination - but because it is the only place from which the next version of you can emerge.
Nothing gets skipped. Nothing is wasted. The person you are today is not an obstacle to who you’re becoming; they are the ground from which that becoming unfolds.
All you can really do is commit to discovering - again and again - what that next version might be. Not through grand reinvention, but through small, daily acts of curiosity and attention.
Every day, in my coaching practice and in my own life, I see how this understanding doesn’t automatically translate into how we live.
Without a conscious commitment to presence - to meeting each moment with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to really see ourselves - we tend to resist change until it is forced upon us by crisis. For many of us, transformation happens only when staying the same becomes more painful than stepping into the unknown.
Human beings are deeply attached to what’s familiar. Without awareness, we cling to old patterns - even limiting or painful ones - because they are predictable. They offer the illusion of safety.
What actually makes change possible isn’t force or self-criticism. It’s humility. And courage. The courage to look at ourselves clearly, without rushing to fix, improve, or escape what we find.
As a new year begins - one already promising uncertainty and unanswered questions - I find myself uninterested in goals and performance metrics.
What I’m drawn to instead is placing my attention on the only thing ever truly available to us: the present moment.
The past and the future exist only in the mind. And when we truly internalise that - not as an idea, but as a lived understanding - the moment we are inhabiting right now starts to feel less like something to get through, and more like an opening.
From this place, the path forward doesn’t need to be fully visible. It’s enough to meet what is here with humility and courage, and to take the step that presents itself - even in uncertainty, even without guarantees.
When my son asked what he should change about himself, what I really wanted him to hear was this: You are already whole. And the journey of becoming more fully yourself always begins exactly where you are.
So I invite you to meet yourself there too - with honesty, with tenderness, and with the quiet courage it takes to stay open to what wants to unfold.
