I resist making resolutions at the ends of Decembers. The idea of “resolving” to do something doesn’t work for me.
Not because I’m too lazy. If there’s one thing that’s proved true over the years, it’s this piece of folk wisdom:
“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”
Defeatist? Maybe. But not really.
That’s because time and again what I thought I would do/not do has been wrong, although not always in a bad way. In addition, things I knew were true turned out to be, um, untrue. A few examples:
As an 18-year-old I thought I might not have children, ever. (My daughter was born two years later.)
Also as an 18-year-old, I thought I’d major in journalism and become a newspaper reporter. (Didn’t major in journalism; in fact, I dropped out of college after one year. However, I did eventually become a reporter.)
In my 20s, 30s and 40s I knew that our troubled marriage was my fault. (Oh, hell, no.)
In my late 30s I considered going back to college because I felt insecure about not having a degree. (Didn’t happen until a decade later, but ultimately I got a degree at age 52, without taking on a cent of debt.)
Fate has a sense of humor
Had I resolved to do/not do those (and other) things and had them not happen/be greatly delayed, then I probably would have judged myself pretty harshly. Loser! You can’t do ANYTHING right!
These days I wouldn’t beat myself up quite like that. However, I might still believe, deep down, that fate wasn’t solely to blame.
Intellectually, I’d know that an economic crash or a health issue wouldn’t be my fault as such. Emotionally? Still working on that idea about things I can/cannot change. I’m better at giving such encouragement than following it.
Understand: Resolutions are not bad things. Vowing to clear the consumer debt, get a better job, learn new skills, volunteer somewhere, build strong social networks, plant a garden – all are great goals to have.
For me the difference is word-based. A goal is something I can work toward, whereas a resolution is something I must accomplish. Maybe it’s splitting hairs to redefine a resolution as a strategy or a tactic on Dec. 31, but that’s what will get me though the following 366 nights.
Public proclamation isn’t my speed
While I don’t resolve to do much of anything, I do have a list of wants and an accompanying list of strategies and tactics to achieve them.
While I congratulate those who are bold enough to shout, “In 2016 I will write and sell four e-books” or “This is the year I start my own business and turn a profit within six months,” that’s just not me.
I’m simply not the kind of person to proclaim publicly the things I will do in any given 12 months. Not only do I not want the (internalized) pressure, I don’t want the frustration should life suddenly starts doing brodies.
Put another way: In my mid-40s I knew I’d always be a newspaper reporter. In fact, I remember feeling grateful for my vocation because people were always going to read newspapers. Insert your own punch line here.
Readers: Do you make resolutions or create goals for the new year?
Related posts:
- Accepting responsibility for our lives
- Taking a (careful) leap of faith
- Turning invisibility into stealth
- The life I once led
That does this mean “doing brodies”?
Slang definitions vary, but the one I meant was “life spinning around 180 degrees on you in a sudden and startling way.” Apparently it also refers to any dangerous feat.
I don’t make resolutions because I try to avoid anything that will cause extra guilt in my life if (when) I don’t succeed.
I am going to try to go a second year without buying craft supplies while focusing on using what I already have. I enjoyed the challenge last year, so it won’t be too hard to continue.
We’re going to try and do the same, except it’s with stuff from the pantry and freezer. The specific challenge is to spend as little as possible on food for the next few months.
Since we got $250 worth of grocery and meat market gift cards for Christmas, that won’t exactly be onerous. But we’re limiting it, i.e., try to buy only a few specific fresh items (milk, fruit and vegetables) in order to use up more of what we’ve canned and stockpiled. The meat GCs will be used later, when we’ve cleared out the freezer.
I’m not a “resolver.” I do believe strongly in the power of a well-defined goal. I also believe just as strongly that I need flexibility as I determine and progress toward my goals to allow for life’s little curveballs. Because, hey, I don’t want that pressure either.
Flexibility — that is key.
I never make resolutions, there is just enough stress in my life without creating more for myself. I do create goals and managed to achieve quite a few of them this year. In my quest to get organized we have cleaned out the garage, built a storage shed, began preparing for a Spring Garage Sale, reorganized my living room, bedroom and made a guest room into a guest room/library to store my books beautifully. My goal is to continue the quest to turn my home into the perfect space to suit us and meet our needs for now and the future.
I thought maybe my NOT making resolutions might be why I felt I was failing at making headway. So, I made resolutions for about ten years and then felt I was a failure in certain areas. Now, I stick with goals. When I do not reach a goal, I don’t kick myself of feel like I failed. “Resolutions” seem so lofty. Goals seem more down to earth.
This year I have decided to keep my resolutions to myself. My reason is that this year my resolutions are so important for me to manifest that I don’t ever want to mention them, but work my butt off to make them a reality. Good luck with your secret resolutions this year.
And to you, with yours! Perhaps this time next year we’ll both be writing about our secret resolutions/intentions/re-sets. (Depending on how they work out, I suppose.)
IMHO making those resolutions “public” just makes it more difficult when one is not successful. Sometimes…many times not achieving goals are out of our control. And as for the newspaper industry…in another life I was a distributor for a large newspaper and made a very nice living. It confounds me as to the speed at which that industry has and is declining.
Instead of making resolutions, I see it as getting back on track. The holidays are crazy with spending and eating and everyone off their regular schedules, trying to cram too much into December. January is for planning meals and eating from the freezer instead of getting takeout. This time of year usually brings a kind of money hangover. Even if we’ve been under budget for the holidays, we’ve still spent and done more at the end of the year than most other months.
I set only one for my self this year but it’s an achievable goal. I had a bit of a health set back and started to work on in it December 1. My weight had reached an all time high and was starting to affect my overall health.
So I guess my resolution to reach (and maintain) a reasonable weight is vague enough to take some pressure off me.
I haven’t stepped on a scale since December 1 but my clothes are getting loose so I guess I’m on my way. I work out almost every day when I can. It’s too important for my overall health not to continue to do my best effort.
Weight loss — yep, me too.
Funny I have “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” on my corkboard. I would like to resolve to put less pressure on myself by not making resolutions. It is a bit of circular logic but I’m an engineer so it makes sense to me.
I often feel like I am on a virtual treadmill with no OFF button and that someone else controls the speed. Also, most of the standard resolutions, lose weight, exercise more, clean up the clutter require time and energy. I measure time and energy out very carefully just to complete the tasks of each day. Anything extra requires an almost herculean effort. Even though working is one of the tasks I want to do in my life, when I get home from work I am pooped.
I haven’t made resolutions for years, but this year I’ve decided to try something different and set some intentions. I’ve also started working on using positive language, i.e. saying ‘remember’ vs. ‘don’t forget’ and working on the changes I want to make vs. ‘trying’ to do something. I will have to monitor myself to see if this is more effective.
Happy New Year Donna!
Intentions == I like that better.
I read the below quote and a question struck me:
“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”
I know you had a question post a while back, but I’m really curious. You mentioned before that you’re a member of Mensa. You lead a pretty quiet and simple life and don’t really have grandiose plans, like to be a CEO of a world-wide company, have 3 homes on 3 continents and 5 cars. Above, you mentioned you wanted to go into journalism. Have you ever met other Mensa members and felt like you’re not living up to “Mensa”-iness? Some people seem to really like to throw their intellect around. Or you read about kids having IQs that rival Einstein and Stephen Hawking and they aspire to be the next Einstein or Hawking. Most parents, if their kids are Mensa members, they want Oxford or Harvard along with the life style. Not a simple, frugal, non-materialistic life.
I actually was in print journalism for 18 years, and then spent another six years writing for MSN Money. Although my current freelance is mostly for websites (plus an occasional magazine), I’d consider a lot of that to be web journalism.
Mensans are a pretty varied bunch. From https://www.mensa.org/about-us:
“There are Mensans on welfare and Mensans who are millionaires. As far as occupations, the range is staggering. Mensa has professors and truck drivers, scientists and firefighters, computer programmers and farmers, artists, military people, musicians, laborers, police officers, glassblowers–the diverse list goes on and on. There are famous Mensans and prize-winning Mensans, but there are many whose names you wouldn’t know.”
Thus I don’t stress out over not being Mensan enough. My life is quiet and simple, but quite rich; it helps to have a brilliant partner (DF has never been tested, but I bet he’d land in the top 2 percent), a Mensan best friend (Linda B., who was the one who nagged me into being tested in the first place), and a job that lets me learn all kinds of stuff and then share it with readers (here and also on the sites for which I write).
You’ve given me another goal/intention, though: To look up the Anchorage chapter of Mensa once more. I belonged to it when I lived here before, but I haven’t checked in for quite a while.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.
I’m definitely with you on goals instead of resolutions! Goals sound proactive and make me feel in control. Resolutions sound downright punitive.
I think you were just a few words off on your newspaper reporting vocational assessment. If you had said you were glad to be a writer because people will always read, you would have nailed it!
“If you had said you were glad to be a writer because people will always read, you would have nailed it!”
Ha! Except that I sometimes worry people are getting out of the habit of reading. Real reading, not checking social media updates.
Nah, real readers do both 🙂
Reminds me, not you but the idea, of a pair of nosy judgmental men on the train once who made nasty comments about how “kids these days don’t read anymore” because my best friend and I were settling into our seats across from them and checking our social media. Of course they quickly tried to about-face when we finished what we were doing and wordlessly pulled out our dogeared, bookmarked paperback.
I guess what I’m worried about is a dearth of “real readers.” Because I’m one of them, too: I check social media (in part because it’s work-related and in part because I can check in on friends and family) but I also read real books.
I don’t see any reason for those guys to have said that out loud. Think all you want, but why poison the atmosphere with negativity? Especially when you’re wrong???
I don’t make resolutions either but I do take stock of my life activities at the end of each year and think about where my focus needs to be in the next year. Somehow my intentions get decided for me so that is what I try and do. This year includes a milestone birthday so one of my focuses is on getting “older age” stuff done – those documents that name how you want things to go when you start to slow. I guess that is how it goes!
I’m not a resolutioner, either.
I make plans or goals, knowing that if they’re derailed I’ll have to make new ones because good grief has that happened a lot in my life, and I don’t specifically target New Year for it unless there’s some really good reason for it. Generally I like to announce my goals after I’ve made headway, it may be sort of like cheating but I’d rather spend that time and energy digging in and making a go of it before I share them publicly. I’ve had a few successes with announcing something first and then doing it, but it sits uncomfortably with my intrinsic motivation. It feels like I’ve externalized the motivation and that decreases my dedication to the cause. It is weird, but I’ve finally accepted that fact.
(And wouldn’t you know that right this minute I’m struggling to come up with a few goals to set up for the coming year?)
I’m a firm believer in goals rather than resolutions. goals can be assessed and adjusted to meet changing circumstances, whereas resolutions feel so unyielding and failing to live up to them feels like failure.
I haven’t yet figured out my goals for 2016. (Clearly, “be punctual” is right out… ;>) One goal is to use the local paratransit system to make at least one solo trip, though I haven’t yet figured out where to go or what I’ll do once I get there…
My recommendation: Make it a trip to a massage practitioner.
I’m too d@mn tired to make resolutions, it’s all I can do to keep on keepin’ on. ;o)
I already had a family meeting to plan for the year. I need to seriously shore up our emergency fund, we had some major uninsured medical expenses last year. Also, I am expecting a pay cut later this year,so I’m going to practice living on even less before it happens. Cooking and menu plans are helping already. I suspect I may have to take a hard line with some family members, but at least they didn’t realise the meeting was simply to inform them of decisions already taken (I was very polite). It’s my money, it will where I want it to go.
Tough love, baby. Tough love.
No. I’ve never made New Year’s resolutions. By their nature, they’re self-defeating.
I have specific short-term goals that I support with to-do lists (to do this month; this week; today). But if I made lists of huge, vague goals I felt I had to accomplish in thus-and-such a year, the effect would be to make me feel oppressed and depressed.