Are Your Resolutions Solutions?

Are your resolutions solutions?

Yup…it’s that time of year again…when we do the annual New Year’s resolutions thing, where we resolve to do something good for ourselves.

Well, maybe.  But is this really worth doing?  Does it have any value at all?

Mark Twain is reported as saying, “Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

Apparently, Twain noticed the same thing many of us have experienced many times over the years…

Resolutions don’t seem to stick! They solve nothing.  If  these folks made a resolution to solve a problem, it didn’t work.

I have been a member of the local Y for the past few years, and I see the same thing every year…In January the place is flooded with new members, enthusiastically working up a sweat on the machines and workout equipment, or jogging on the track, only to watch as, over the next few months, the number of people declines.  It is predictable.   I can only assume that those folks made resolutions to do something about adding more exercise in their life, but it didn’t take.

Maybe “resolutions” is the wrong word.  Maybe we should be talking about promises.  Maybe we should be making promises to ourselves to do better.   A promise has a different power than a resolution, in that most of us hate to break promises.

Do we respect ourselves well enough to make promises to ourselves about being better, having better health, having better relationships, doing better work, and so on?  And do we make those promises with the clear intent to honor them, in the same way we would honor a promise to a spouse, a friend or a colleague? Do we think enough of ourselves to make these promises, and then keep them?

I like the word “promises” better.  So, are you going to make yourself any promises in 2024?

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