Resolution 09?

Jan 02 2009

So much is made every year about new year’ resolutions. It seems crazy that people make unreal promises to themselves only to be set up for failure. I read a great article on the Huff Post yesterday that really provides some great insight. Kira Craft questions the timing of these resolutions…she says, “The coldest, darkest month of the year seems like an odd moment to confront major life changes. In fact, statistics show that 75% of those who make resolutions at New Year’s fail on their first attempt to keep them, and is it any wonder? I can barely rouse myself to clean my bathroom much less make an ambitious behavioral U-turn smack dab in the middle of winter.”

I totally agree. Why make promises you know you cannot keep at a time when they are the hardest to keep? While anyone will tell you that I am a shiny optimist, I do feel really bad about myself when I don’t do something I say I am going to do. That is why this year I resolve to not make any resolutions. Instead I am seeking to learn from my first year in New York and improve. Craft makes the perfect closing statement….

“Don’t misunderstand me, it’s not that I am planning a year of steeping in self-indulgence, I’ve just simply decided that being okay with where I’m at is a calmer approach to eventually arriving at where I want to go. Who needs the arbitrary date of January 1st as pressure to aim for perfection? And who really likes perfection anyway? As Abraham Lincoln said, “It has been my experience that folks with no vices have very few virtues.” So I think I will stay interesting and complex as I dawdle in my vices for a few more months, at least.”