Every year as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, I think about all of the people who are vowing to change their daily life, people promising themselves that they’ll pick up a new sport or perhaps do more charity work. I wonder how many people are thinking to themselves “Okay, the diet starts NOW.” It becomes a running joke that most New Year’s resolutions won’t last more than a week. You’re lucky if you’re still at the gym by January 10th. It’s almost as if every resolution maker knows that it won’t last from the start.
We like the idea of living a glorious week working toward a goal, but somehow it’s OK to slump back into old habits when the week is over. We shrug it off, saying, “at least we tried.”
But can we really say that yes, we really have tried our best? New Year’s has turned into a cop-out for those of us who aren’t truly serious about changing our lives. It has become so expected that we will fail that we start to believe it ourselves. It’s a way to convince ourselves that we tried it, and it didn’t work, so there’s no use in trying again. Resolutions seem to be for the lazy, who want the credit without real work and commitment.
Why has the change in the calendar year, as exciting as it may be, become the traditional time for change in all other aspects of our lives? In reality, the only difference is the number we write when we date our papers.
Come January 1, everyone is still at a different point in their lives. Some of us may, in fact, be ready to make a drastic change, while others may need a couple months to straighten out their lives before focusing on losing those 10 pounds.
The truth is, we don’t need a landmark change, be it the date, or the end of a quarter to tell us that we’re ready to take the leap.
New Year’s is such an obvious time for change that it has become a death trap for procrastinators. Say in October we develop a desire to learn an instrument. Not having the energy to start learning, we just add it to next year’s resolution list. All the while October might have been the perfect time to start.
There is never a bad time to start taking care of ourselves. Every resolution we make is something that we really want to do, because we know it will be good for us. Imagine if every time we thought of something we’d like to do or change about ourselves – we just did it. No lingering or dragging our feet.
Perhaps this way there would be fewer regrets. We should do the things we want to do when the time is right, and if that time is Jan. 1, then so be it. The important thing is that it’s right for us, and not the yearly calendar.
