Resolutions? Really?
Happy New Year! With a little strategic planning, some good old-fashioned elbow grease, and a generous dose of love, 2016 stands a chance at being an excellent year.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away I decided to dislike and not participate in the insanity of New Year’s Resolutions. Once I left home to attend university I discovered that I was a bit of a type A girl. Prior to that I was the master of doing just enough. When I got married a few years later I discovered that I really am a type A++++ personality – although my oldest daughter and my daughters-from-another-mother make me look like a slacker! I make lists, and I love to check things off – it just feels so darn good to acknowledge what I’ve gotten done. There is always a master list for the day (and often for the week) on my desk. To the casual observer it looks like a scrap of paper, usually saved from the recycling pile, with a list down one side and various notes about other things I’m working on that are temporarily important down the other side. As the day or week progresses the page gets less readable with scribbles, notes, things that got crossed off, doodles – I’m a kinetic processor and doodling helps me think. As the page gets busier and busier important things that are still not complete might get circled, highlighted, written a couple of times to bold them, or doodled around to draw attention to them.
I have long believed that if something is going to be of benefit to me I should not delay starting it; hence, the aversion to the New Year’s flavor of resolutions. I typically evaluate things at the three ‘new year’ marks in the year – Jan 1, my birthday, and September – but even then, when I notice something I want to change and it’s not a new year mark, why would I wait? It’s so much easier to tackle big projects one at a time, staggered out over the year as I see the need rather than delaying the start to attack the mountain of changes all at once.
Whether you do or don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, I echo what Neil Gaiman said. “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.”1 I plan on making plenty of mistakes again this year and mixing that with a generous dose of success.
And as always – I wish you health, happiness, love, and prosperity – and I want to know what do you think 2016 holds for you? What would you like 2016 to become?