Nikolai S Halay:
Can you tell me about your experience with resolutions?
I use them all the time. Usually just before going to sleep at night. I tell myself that I will sleep restfully and awaken refreshed, alert, and focused. It has never failed yet. I don't wake up groggy or unfocused any longer. I can begin where I left off in my thinking and in the things I wanted to get accomplished from the day before much easier. I live a secluded lifestyle, so there are no distractions around to interfere with this process.
One other associated method I have used in the past and continue on occasion to use in the present is a method that doesn't so much rely upon one making a resolution or determination in meditation beforehand as it does on imbuing the mind with suggestive meditation instruction (to use one example) prior to the session so that the mind is suffused with these concepts/images before entering meditation. It helps one get into the space where these concepts are aiming much quicker once one does sit down and begin to meditate.
This can be a somewhat difficult process to impart to someone who is new to meditation as they are still getting their feet wet, trying to figure out what meditation and mental cultivation is all about and whether or not this "meditation stuff" really works. Also, the beginner is usually still working at calming the mind down from the "monkey mind" syndrome. It helps to have a quiet mind prior to meditating, and this can sometimes take some time for a beginner to finally accomplish. But for others who have more experience in meditation and in some of the possibilities of what the mind can achieve, it comes easier for them to grasp and apply this concept. I've used this concept for a long time to help me enter absorption quicker. All I had to do was to think of a time in my past when my mind became absorbed in an activity, recreate that experience in my mind as I was meditating, and the mind would go there automatically.