It's time to train our emotional side, says Pete Kelley.

I'm not very emotional. At least, I tell myself that. As a bloke who lives alone I even tell myself I 'can't afford to be', as if that were some kind of virtue.

That's nonsense, of course.

But, I want to suggest, it's a bit of nonsense that links well to this time of year.

We tend to think of feelings as something that just happens, like weather. Even if there is some recognition that they can be 'whipped up' or that at times we need to 'shake off' the negative ones, in our culture I don't often see well expressed the idea that our emotional side can - needs to be - trained, harnessed, needs its own equivalent of the gym, if it's going to be healthy and rich.

I've been exploring Buddhism, over the last year or so. And what strikes me is that while - like all major creeds - it encourages us to act decently, Buddhism doesn't just urge us to be 'good'. It actively explores why that's difficult.

And it has practical techniques which make changing ourselves do-able, with a bit of patience and practice.

Returning, specifically, to the point about emotions, I can't be alone in having experienced uplifting moments when I've resolved to be different in some way. I've probably made a list, and been quite fired up.

But it doesn't last, or not often.

And in our culture, the response is just to feel guilty, believe you didn't try hard enough.

OK, there's a lot to be said for persistence, establishing good habits. But Buddhism tells us that even with lots of willpower we're going to have trouble if we weren't fully emotionally on board in the first place… if the idea was just a 'head decision'.

If our emotions aren't 'on the same page', it's like pointing a car in the right direction but not putting a battery in it. We lack 'oomph' if it's not what we really want. But - be honest - how often do we really know what we want? It's surprisingly difficult.

Whether you're a religious person or not, it seems to me there's a lot in this Buddhist idea of achieving 'integration', as it's sometimes called. Over the last couple of thousand years, they've made quite a science of it, in fact… learned a lot about how it works.

Meditation is one technique which seems to help, but there's a lot more. Check out Norwich Buddhist Centre if you're interested.

In the meantime, instead of feeling bad about those New Year Resolutions, maybe have a quiet moment and ask what you really want.