Alright, it’s a new year, and time to kick off this blog for something good. I thought about how I want to do this, and I’m going to try for weekly posts. That’s around 52 posts this year; approximately 26,000 words if I stick to my guns. I imagine I can do that.
For the first post of the year, I am, of course, going to continue the tradition of beating new year’s resolutions to death with the amount we talk about them. However, I hope to accomplish something different than you might expect.
If we break down what a new year’s resolution typically is, we have someone choosing one thing they want to do to improve themselves in the coming year. For most people, this is a regular activity or way of looking at things, though this by no means covers all possibilities. Then, we have the phenomenon preemptively and prophetically covered by the media every year: the eventual “failure” of the resolution.
Working under the assumption that the media gets it from somewhere and at least some demographic regularly “fails” their new year’s resolutions, how can we address it?
The first thing I would propose, that you may have already picked up on by my use of quotations, is that we change the way we talk about them. Something that has been demonstrated time and again is the power of language and mentality. If we’re bombarded by celebrities and anchors telling us that our resolutions are bound for failure or not realistic enough, they’re (probably unwittingly) poking at insecurities, anxieties, and fears that people may have. After all, we’re trying to make ourselves better people with these resolutions. How would you feel if someone told you you can’t be any better?
That said, there is a practicality to proposing alternatives, and some people do have unrealistic resolutions. The point is that less than a week in we’re already being told that a significant number of us are going to fail. Some of us haven’t even had a chance to start.
To get away from this negative idea of failure in a practical way (I’m not a fan of countering negativity with mindless positivity. I actually have a blog post sitting unfinished in draft about this topic), I think we need to look at what we’re trying to do in a broader, less specific way. This is actually a trick I’ve learned from being a perfectionist: If you’re too focused on a specific detail that doesn’t work, step back and look at what you’re trying to accomplish. In this case, I’m going with the idea that we’re trying to become better people in the coming year. You might have a different idea, and I encourage you to work with whatever that is.
Now that we’ve defined what our core goal is, we can be a little more flexible when faced with challenges. One of my resolutions is to be more active and involved in my communities. If for some reason that doesn’t work for me, I know that I’m doing that to build relationships and share my gifts with the world, and I could, say, stick to a more behind-the-scenes contribution or personal relationship-building. Maybe I just take it a little more slowly. To use something more familiar: the work-out regimen. Maybe you have a very good reason why you can’t make it to the gym. Maybe it just doesn’t jive with you. In that case, maybe there’s a different form of exercise that doesn’t require the gym. Maybe you eat differently, work harder, walk more. Don’t berate yourself just because the gym doesn’t work out.
Some people in media have attached to a similar idea. I suppose I’m just saying it with my own personal touch.
One other thing you may have noticed is that I said I have more than one resolution. As I said, I’m a perfectionist (and I don’t see why we’d just limit ourselves to one thing a year), but it also serves a purpose. If I come up with more than one way I can improve and commit to it, I still have something to fall back on if one of my resolutions fail.
This is really just an extension of the point I already made, taking a very large, meta-step back, but it’s the same principle of being flexible and having contingency plans. If there’s absolutely no way I can resolve my community resolution, I can just as well find equal meaning somewhere else.
In closing, you shouldn’t just give up on your resolutions when things don’t work out right away, either. Flexibility is one thing, resilience is another. If you really want to do something, keep trying until you figure it’s just not going to work.
So, what’s your new years resolution? Do you even have one? Nobody said you had to! What do you think you’re really trying to accomplish with the goals you’ve set for yourself?
The Arcane Mind 