It’s that time of year again, when many of us will once again resolve to lose weight, stop smoking, get organized, watch less TV, be more productive — in sum, improve ourselves in one way or another. Despite the notoriously low success rate of New Year’s resolutions, hope springs eternal and we think “this year will be different.”

Why do so many of us fail to carry out our good intentions? Well, what has happened in past years when you’ve slipped up? If you’ve been able to acknowledge the setback without getting too upset, or – even better – genuinely seen your lapse as a good thing, an opportunity to learn from a mistake, then you probably don’t need the ideas in this article. But if you know that you are your own harshest critic, berating yourself for every momentary failure, then consider doing something different. Instead of trying to change, consider “just noticing” your shortcomings.

In the typical course of events, we don’t “just notice” when we once again light up, or finish half the cookies, waste an entire weekend playing spider solitaire, or search for hours through piles of paper for the phone message we can’t find. Instead, we talk to ourselves. Here’s the script we use.

“Here I go again. What’s the matter with me!”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this!”

“How stupid am I!”

“Just forget it; I might as well give up; I’ll never be any different.”

No wonder our resolution fails. What if instead you just noticed what you were doing — without judging it? What if you were able to be like a camera, or tape recording, transcribing what was happening — witnessing it — but without any judgment? In this case, the script would be different. It would sound more like:

“I’m reaching for another cookie. I’m eating it. I’m not even hungry. Now I’m angry because I’m thinking, well, I want something sweet right now; is that so terrible? My heart is beating faster. Now I’m thinking why are you doing this again! I’m feeling upset. I’m reaching for another cookie…”

What good does it do to “just notice”? How does it help to just notice not only when we are failing to keep our resolutions, but also to just notice when we are berating ourselves for failing to keep our resolutions?

You can think of what’s happening here as involving different people. There is the Physical You who is lighting up another cigarette or procrastinating again or reaching for another cookie. There is the Judgmental You who is criticizing herself for doing these things. The Judgmental You is reacting to what you are doing and distressed by it. But there’s another you who is also present. That’s the Witness, the you who is the Witness to all of this, the you who is ‘just noticing’ what is happening without judging it. The Witness notices “I’m reaching for another cookie,” just noting your actions as if to transcribe them, as impartially as a camera or tape recorder might.

You can see this Witness for yourself by just noticing what is going on in your own mind. Right now, for example, notice yourself reading these words. Notice your reactions to reading them. The “you” who is doing that noticing is not part of the reading or of your reactions: it simply witnesses them. And the amazing thing about that Witnessing You is its calm impartiality. It never judges.

Think of it this way: thoughts and feelings rise in your consciousness. After you notice them, the Judging You says: “Oh, no, I shouldn’t feel that way!” or “What a terrible thought to have!” But your consciousness itself doesn’t stand back and decide whether or not to let a thought or feeling come up. It accepts them all. It’s the calm, impartial Witness. When you just notice without judging, you’re spending more time as the Witness and less as the Judge.

And how does this help? Well, for one thing is takes us out of the cycle of events that we’re caught up in. At least momentarily, we experience the calmness of the Witness instead of the mindlessness of automatically doing whatever we’re doing or the distress of being upset by our actions. It also gives us a chance to practice not being the Judge. When we realize that being our own harshest judge doesn’t help us, we often try to stop judging. We might say to ourselves: There I go again, getting mad at myself, and I’m supposed to stop judging myself, I can’t even do that!” Of course, even as we are saying these things to ourselves, we are once again judging ourselves! But what if, instead of trying to stop judging ourselves, we just notice when we are doing the judging? At that point, we are standing in the calmness of the Witness, noticing ourselves judging ourselves but not judging ourselves for doing so.

When you are failing to keep your New Year’s resolutions, try practicing that gentle acceptance instead of the harsh self-judgment that is so familiar to many of us, and see what happens. You might find yourself a bit calmer, a bit less distressed by your shortcomings. You might even find yourself naturally changing what you are doing — not because you’re shouting at yourself that you should be different, but because standing in the calm pool of the Witness you become genuinely drawn to doing something different.

If you have some knowledge of Eastern philosophy, these ideas will probably have a familiar ring to them. One of the goals of meditation is to practice exactly this attitude of non-judgmental acceptance, to practice “just noticing” the thoughts and feelings that arise during meditation without becoming involved in them, without reacting to them, without judging them. The ideas in this essay have been influenced by Advaita, a “non-dual” philosophy, particularly as non-dualism is discussed in Eternity Now by Francis Lucille, a book that is available on his website (www.francislucille.com).

In my own book, Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things, I argue that the first step in overcoming our blind spots is always a backwards one. We need to step back from what we are engaged in to become more aware of what is happening, to consider ourselves and the situation from different angles. When we sit with the Witness, we are stepping back in a particular way that allows us to shed our usual judgmental reactions and discover what is feels like to be free of them.