The Snowflake Chronicles

Thoughts on New Year�s Resolutions

11 Masa’il 163 B.E. - December 22, 2006

The Gregorian New Year is approaching. In approximately ten days (give or take a few hours) 2006 will limp off into the dark midnight of oblivion and 2007 will wail its birth chant. It is time for many people to make New Years Resolutions, which will probably be broken before the New Year ham is cold and ready to slice for sandwiches.

According to dictionary.com, which cites the American Heritage dictionary, resolutions means deciding on courses of action to take (I combined two of the definitions for this). Maybe instead of deciding on more than one course of action, a person should just choose a single course or action. One resolution is easier to keep than multiple resolutions.

When making resolutions ask these questions: What sacrifice is required to achieve this? Am I willing to make the required sacrifice? My reasoning behind this is that in order to achieve any goal or resolution one may have to sacrifice something else.

Instead of calling them resolutions, which suggests that a person is going to keep them, why not choose another name. Because to either quote or paraphrase Dr. Phil – “The best way to determine future behavior is to look at past behavior.” Because, not matter how good the intentions are, if resolutions haven’t been kept in the past they’re not going to be kept in the future. So, let’s just call them something like this year I’m going to make a good attempt at or stuff I’d like to do, but probably won’t.

Remember beside the Gregorian New Year there is the Chinese New Year, the various religions have different days they celebrate as a New Year, so you have several chances during the coming year to start over with your resolutions. This is a good chance to research and find out about the different religions and their New Year celebrations.

Be gentle with yourself. Just because you drop and break your resolution on New Year Day, doesn’t mean you can’t pick the pieces up and attempt to glue it back together. Better yet chose a resolution, that doesn’t break or shatter when you drop it, but bounces like a ball.

Remember, Today is the first day of the rest of your life. So everyday is, in reality, the beginning of a New Year and you can start over again at dawn or sunset or midnight depending on when your day begins.