HAPPY NEW YEAR! We clink our glasses, kiss our loved ones, and wake up to a new year with billions of resolutions made. All so perfectly planned each and every year, always expecting the same outcome. It's kind of madness.
When I reflect on my past resolutions, I cannot think of a single one I actually managed to keep. Not to my surprise, most of them involved losing weight and joining a gym.
I stopped making resolutions a long time ago. Not because they aren’t realistic, and not because I gave up on making changes, but because I spent months thinking about a resolution that is going to happen on a specific day just so I don’t go through with it.
It’s a waste of emotional energy and it’s mind clogging.
Don't Make a Resolution
I have come up with a solution to all of our New Year's resolution problems, and it’s don’t make one.
Rather than waiting a month to start, why can’t you start now? Are you only worthy of one chance a year? If that opportunity doesn’t go as planned, which we know it most likely won't, do you have to wait another whole year to start again? When you can be making the necessary changes now, why would you wait?
Get off the bandwagon and make the choices that are going to be better for your growth now. It’s healthy to reevaluate ourselves — that’s how we grow — through the observation of our actions and how they are affecting our overall growth as a human being. But once a year is unrealistic.
It’s actually nonsense that we spend so much time obsessing over it instead of taking steps in the right direction. But we also need the most important part of the resolution, the solution. Life requires solutions, it's inevitable.
Find Your Solution
When we wait for that one day a year to make the change or take the necessary leaps, we close ourselves off to so many opportunities and so many chances for growth. Just because you start now does not mean it's going to go how you want.
Stuff happens, not everything goes how we want it to, and that’s ok! You can’t be hard on yourself and give up immediately when life takes an unexpected U-turn. If life was perfect, we wouldn’t know what to do when things unravel, which they will.
Instead of having one overarching resolution for the whole year, have a resolution for every moment that is in front of you.
The topic of your resolution is not even what's important, it’s the actions and the steps that are taken for what the solution is going to be. So jot down some thoughts, separate expectations from reality, really observe what needs growth in your life, not what society or other people think, and get up and make serious moves.
Plant the seed of what is important to you and allow it to slowly blossom. Some petals will fall, but the roots will always remained grounded into the earth.
Will you be making New Year's resolutions this year? Why or why not? Share with us below!