On Making and Keeping New Year Resolutions

by Laura Cain

New Year Resolutions

 

Each New Year feels like a time of fresh starts. New chapters. All the possibilities. And making and keeping New Year Resolutions.

Resolutions. People can have very strong feelings about that one word. 

Many will make strong resolutions each New Year, hopeful for making big positive changes, only to give up on them after a few weeks, or months, of not sticking to them, or making them just seem so big as to be almost impossible.

Others will say they don’t believe in making resolutions. Often because of the fact that since most people don’t seem to stick to them, there is a negative connotation that resolutions are always doomed to fail.

Which one are you?

A better way to make and keep New Year Resolutions.

I feel like any time can be a good time, the right time, to make a decision (a “resolution”) to make changes for the better. And some milestones (like a new year, a birthday, etc.) can give you that push or line in the sand date, to prompt you to do it. That part is a good thing. I think where the whole resolution thing goes wrong, is that people make them too big, too all-encompassing.  Then the result is the stereotype of resolutions failing, becomes really kind of a true thing, a self-fulfilling prophecy if you will.

So how about this? Make your resolution to not make “resolutions”, or at least not call them that, and also not make them an all-or-nothing proposition (another thing that dooms them).

What if you just make a decision to be more conscious of the choices that you make? You decide on what your goals are, who you want to be, and how you want to live your life. And you work to make more of your choices in line with those decisions. Sure you may not hit the mark every time. But that’s not what you are saying you will do. It’s not all or nothing. Just every day, one step at a time, one choice at a time, more often in the right direction instead of the wrong direction, to be better and more you. The best you.

That’s a way we can all make and keep New Year Resolutions.

Happy New Year.

 

 

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