Happy New Year!
It is the most hopeful time of year. It is a new year and with a new year comes resolutions. So in this edition of comment challenge, I want to ask you about New Year’s resolutions.
Did you know that the tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions can be traced to ancient Babylonia? According to Wikipedia, Babylonians would make promises to their gods that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts. In Ancient Roman, Romans would make promises to their god Janus, from whom January stems.
The point of the promises and most all resolutions is to either start, stop, or continue doing something one “should”.
There has been a lot of debate about New Year’s resolution since so many go unfulfilled. In today’s comment challenge, I want to know your philosophy on New Year’s resolutions.
How do you view resolutions? What, if any resolutions have you kept? Are resolutions just new year chatter?
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Hi Julia…hmmm…you got me thinking now! I am ambiguous about New Year’s Resolutions. On the one hand I know that there is a very high statistic that says that most people have given up whatever they determined to do by February. But January 1 seems so much like a “do-over,” a “blank slate,” a “new beginning,” that it’s really hard for me to let go of the idea. This time, I made a resolution and then put skin in the game to make sure I was serious. For my writing, I joined Jeff Goin’s 500 word challenge (and FB group). We are determining to write 500 words a day and hold each other accountable for it. The other thing I did, near the end of last year is hire a writing coach so I had money out there to keep me working on my memoir. Then finally, when I began to get ill from pushing myself too hard, I cancelled a trip for March I really wanted to take (a working trip). That was a HARD one…but I knew I did the right thing. So one resolution I had was to take better care of myself and doing that started the process and helped my mindset. I think sometimes a resolution has to be to take something out of your life rather than add something else to it. What do you think?
Linda,
I think you are spot on. Sometimes we have to take things out of our lives in order to find the balance we need. Good for you for making the hard decision to cancel a trip. If you are anything like me, you were concerned about the consequences your decision made on others but in the end decided that you have to be honest with yourself and your abilities. That is is bravery!
It sounds like that after you made the decision you were at peace with yourself. Isn’t that a great feeling?
Great thought-provoking post, Julia. In most cases it does seem that resolutions are just chatter. It’s more about changing habits and putting systems into place than off-the-cuff thoughts of becoming better. I guess the main difference would be action- a lot of resolutions don’t seem to motivate people to action.
I’m a little late jumping in, but I believe in New Year’s Resolutions/ Goals/ whatever you want to call them. Taking time to evaluate, refocus, and move forward in a specific direction helps me end up where I want to be. Certainly, I am not 100% at hitting every goal every day but by the end of the year I have made forward progress in every area I set out to improve. I do write my goals, I keep them in front of me, and I share them with others. I don’t make huge all encompassing goals. I create resolutions that are the next natural stretch step in my life.