Just Another Day

Have you noticed how New Year’s resolutions would be so much simpler to keep if life didn’t have the super annoying habit of getting in the way?  

I mean, on any given day there are countless distractions in our lives, from devastating fires in Los Angeles, to national politics, maybe one of our favorite football teams even up and loses the Super Bowl, and that’s not even getting started with the day-in-day-out business of living . . . 

There’s just so much to do, all the time.  Then suddenly BOING, almost before you know it, those old familiar habits you’re trying to undo with your neat list of New Year’s resolutions reappear with Jack-in-the-box force!

In the midst of all this challenge and distraction, how can we ever hope to make progress?

According to CBS News.com – “A 2023 poll from Forbes Health found most people give up resolutions after less than four months.” 

I can relate.  For much of my life, as each calendar year wound down its final days, I’d get caught up, floating on a high of my pristine vision of the coming year, which would come true with ease as I stayed the course of my New Year’s resolutions.  But as the weeks came and went, these intentions that had once so fueled my enthusiasm became a source of massive disappointment, frustration, self-pity and shame as I YET AGAIN FAILED to remain true to the resolutions I’d committed my life to months before.

Year, after year, after year it was the same story.  I eventually reached the point where I stopped making resolutions and goals altogether.   After all, what was the point?  I was sick of the cycle of failure.  I would then sink into a deep fear that I would never be strong enough, smart enough, good enough, or courageous enough to make substantial changes in my life.  

Have you ever felt like this?

But the suffering didn’t stop.  Sadly without goals and resolutions, I stopped having a compelling vision for my future and that was downright painful.

It’s only been in recent years that I’ve slowly come to realize that January 1st, even though I love it, is simply the day after December 31st and before January 2nd.  It’s a day with 24 hours or 1,440 minutes, identical in structure to any of the other 364 days in a year.

What does this mean?

To me it means, when we notice that we’ve given up our resolutions, why not use whatever day and whatever minute we choose within it to set new resolutions for ourselves?  There’s no rule for WHEN we have to take a step, of any size, in the direction we wish to travel.  

Will our steps always lead us where we want to go?  No!  

Will we always hold true to these new commitments?  Nope!  We are imperfect best beings.

AND that’s O.K.  Whenever we fall short, instead of waiting many months until the countdown of another new year to recommit to ourselves, we can simply recommit to taking steps in the direction we want wherever and whenever we are ready to recommit. 

Just because we didn’t make the progress we wanted to last time doesn’t mean that we won’t this time, or the next.

So long as we live and breathe, we have the opportunity to recommit and start again and again and again.

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