Resolve

A New Year's Alternative

I’ve written before about my dislike of New Year's resolutions. What irks me about them is my inability to actually do them. This is clearly their fault and not mine. Anecdotally speaking, I think most people who set resolutions tend to fall short and fall short quickly. Working in the fitness industry I can attest to this. Every year we see an uptick of new sign-ups in January only to have many of them fall off the map by March.

So why do we continue to do it? Why do we continue making promises to ourselves only to break them? If insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then I think we have a case of collective insanity around New Year’s resolutions.

I certainly understand the appeal. It’s a clean slate. January 1 feels like an offering of newness. It’s unvarnished and we love a thing unvarnished. We get to write the unwritten chapter that lay ahead. Our circumstances will be different. Our environment will be different. Our conditions will be different…

….beginning next year.

The more I think about it, the more I’m kinda bummed by this. Our resolutions tend to be goals and habits and accomplishments we believe will make us happy. But if we dig deep enough and are honest enough, perhaps those goals aren’t actually the main objective. Perhaps the true desire is to be a different person. To be the type of person who would already have achieved those goals and habits and accomplishments. We don’t seek happiness as much as we seek to be someone who is happy.

It’s doubly sad because not only do we want to be a different person but we’re willing to stave off being that person until an arbitrary date in the future. That vision of “happiness” can wait. We will live in whatever muck we’ve grown accustomed to through the end of the year. Ignoring the fact that January 1 is no different than December 31 or July 17 or March 23 or October 9. The confetti and champagne glasses will still litter the countertops in the morning, so to speak.

My initial impulse is to conclude that we should just live every day as if it’s New Years. But that’s too easy and simplistic (not to mention cheesy af and should be cross-stitched on a pillow). While it’s true that every day offers the same amount of newness that January 1 does, it’s unrealistic to expect humans to wake up each morning with the amount of vigor and rejuvenation we do on News Years Day. It’s impractical and silly.

I think a less silly approach is to pivot completely and wade into the waters of radical acceptance. What, exactly, is holding you back from happiness? If you’re anything like me, I would bet that it’s a vision of how things are supposed to look compared to how things actually look. What would happen if you strip away all expectation of should - should be thinner, should have more money, should have more discipline, should be in a relationship, should be in a better relationship, should be more adventurous, should have a better family, should travel more, should eat better? What’s left after those shoulds are cleared out of the way?

Our true selves maybe? Our selves as we are? Our most unshackled, most natural, most authentic forms?

That, to me, looks an awful lot like freedom, my friends. That looks like a life unencumbered. That looks like an existence free from the bonds of expectation and postponed happiness.

Whatever the New Year means to you, I hope you relish it in the way that feels best for you. I hope you don’t postpone happiness a minute longer and I hope you embrace exactly who and what you are. I hope you release what doesn’t serve you, if only for a few moments. And above all, I hope it’s a good day.