Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out immediately.<\/p>\n
– – – Charles M. Sheldon<\/p>\n
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On the evening of December 31st, a group of my friends and I used to sit around a table and tell each other our New Year\u2019s resolutions. I resolve to do more of this and less of that. I resolve to be more of this and less of that. Our wishes were genuine and hopeful but so often, they were unrealistic.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t written for months but I\u2019m going to go to the computer and write every day for four
hours and finish that novel I haven\u2019t started. I\u2019m going to work out every
morning and lose those extra ten pounds next week so I can fit into the jeans I
bought two years ago. I\u2019m going to run ten miles every day. No more caffeine or
sugar or gluten. I\u2019m going to stay calm in heavy traffic jams.<\/p>\n
It all sounds great but do you know how many people sit at the computer the day after New
Year\u2019s and stare blankly at the words \u201cChapter One?\u201d Do you how many people buy gym memberships on January 2nd and never go? Do you know how many people lose their shit driving to a New Year\u2019s party?<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t go from zero to sixty on the first day of the year. A great deal of the time, we vow to start tomorrow and within a week, we\u2019ve forgotten what we vowed to do. Or we simply don\u2019t want do it. What if we made our resolutions more doable? I resolve to write twice a week for an hour. I resolve to go to the gym every Wednesday afternoon and if I want do more, so much the better. I notice how agitated I get when we\u2019re driving in traffic and I want to remind myself to breathe.<\/p>\n
When we make New Year\u2019s resolutions based on what we didn\u2019t do and what we think we\u2019re going to
do every single day, we start the year by failing. When we find areas where we were deficient the past year and vow to change them as quickly as possible, we make ourselves feel badly about ourselves when we don\u2019t. We say, \u201cI wasn\u2019t kind enough. I wasn\u2019t productive enough. I judged too much. I ate too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why do we wait until New Year\u2019s to notice our hurtful behavior and turn it around? Why do we wait for the ball to drop before we put into practice something that would have made our lives better six months ago? When we\u2019re reviewing the past year, instead of beating ourselves up for what we didn\u2019t do, why not give ourselves kudos for what we did do? There are areas where we did great and some where we didn\u2019t do so great. That\u2019s called being human. What if our efforts aren\u2019t bad or good but they\u2019re enough?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve told the following story before but it\u2019s relevant. A friend of mine was dying and he used his last days making up with people he had issues with. He wanted a clean slate when he died. When I saw what he was doing, I decided to clean my slate right then and instead of waiting until I was on my death bed. I began by making sure that each time I ended a phone call, I had said everything I wanted to say. I made sure that I had said, \u201cI love you\u201d when it was appropriate. I made sure
there was nothing left hanging in the air when I left a lunch date.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re waiting
until we feel comfortable before we apologize for something we said or did,
that time may never come. I had a friend who spent most of December going back
over the mistakes he had made during the past year. He made a list of ways to
do better and he promised himelf that he would start a meditation practice in
January 1st. He would do it every day. He couldn\u2019t wait to get going, but when he woke up that morning, he\u2019d drunk too much champagne the night before and he had a hangover. He vowed to start meditating next day. After all, this was a holiday. He could give himself a break and wait for the end of the week. That didn\u2019t work out so well. Day after day, he put it off. Instead of using meditation as a way to calm down, he was using it to feel guilty.<\/p>\n
The question is:
Do you do a \u201cCinderella\u201d and wait for the stroke of midnight to rush away or do you show up in the moment and make your changes slow and easy? Which way will soothe you? Which way will support you? Which way will serve you and make your life a kinder place to be? One of my most influential teachers, the late Stephen Levine, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of belief systems floating around. Why not choose one that makes you feel good?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d rather not set up the new year on the basis of what I have to do to make my life worthwhile and when I have to do it. I don\u2019t want to invite false expectations and disappointments into my life. I don\u2019t want to set myself up to miss the mark and feel like I failed instead of giving myself kudos for doing the work that will make me feel better.<\/p>\n
Why give yourself a deadline to start doing the right thing? Why not open your heart to what\u2019s good in your life right now and make an effort to continue it? Why wait for the New Year to kick into gear? Why not start right now?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a fan of New Year\u2019s resolution but I did make one:<\/p>\n
I resolve to stop making New Year\u2019s resolutions and start doing whatever it is right now.<\/p>\n
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Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out immediately. – – – Charles M. Sheldon \u00a0 On the evening of December 31st, a group of my friends and I used to sit around a table and tell each other our New Year\u2019s resolutions. I resolve to do more of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2775,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions\/2775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}