A New Years Un-Resolution

Resolving to resolve throughout the year

The New Years Holiday … The end of one year and beginning of the next… provides a good backdrop to reflect on the past and plan for the future. Time to figure out what’s been working for us and what hasn’t. It seems like everyone uses this holiday as the target day to make resolutions. This year, I’m going to buck the trend – and hope you will too.

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Not just another New Years article…

It just so happens that January 1st falls on our standard publication date and John asked if I might be able to do an article with a ‘New Years’ theme. Instead of shrugging it off, or doing yet-another-new-years-bit, I took up the challenge and thought I’d combine two of my inner rules:

There are no coincidences…

If you’re waiting for tomorrow, you always will be…

There are no coincidences…

The first is easy to talk about, but hard to present. The gist is that everything that happens in your life, happens for a reason. That reason may not be readily apparent, but it’s there.

Those events may be to help you, to teach a lesson, to give you an experience – I don’t presume to know all of what may be involved, but I do believe that we call these things into our lives. (And sometimes with the lessons, we get the chance to repeat the same one until we understand it, and sometimes the later versions involve more pain than the earlier ones;-)

Waiting for tomorrow…

As I explained in “People of the World, Untie!”, it helps to have a proper perspective for the past, the present, and the future. For many people, New Years is the only time to consider making a change: the diet starts then, the effort to stop smoking, trips to the gym, mending a relationship – all those things that go under the heading of “new year’s resolution”.

Unfortunately, a good part of the year passes without any effort! If the individual thinks of it close to the end of the year, they say “I’ll start that at the beginning of the year.” If they think of it earlier in the year they say: “This isn’t a good time of the year to start that.” If they think of it on January 2nd, they say: “Too bad I didn’t think of that two days ago – now I’ll have to wait a full year to begin!”

Resolve to change!

Instead of waiting for a special occasion to do the things we know we need to do, it’s better to take action today. If you need to diet, start today. If you want to work out more at the gym, do it. If you want to quit smoking, stop today.

If you spend your life waiting for tomorrow, you end up waiting all of your life.

For this New Years resolution, I suggest that you resolve to change as you need to, when you need to, throughout the year. Don’t wait for an annual review, take charge of your life and make it the one you signed up for!