Resolutions promise transformation, but small, achievable aims may offer more lasting satisfaction.
I’ve been thinking about new year’s resolutions. This started as I lay on the couch on Boxing Day, that most perfect of days when Christmas lights are still on but expectations are off, when all the cooking is done, the leftovers are abundant – pigs in blankets for breakfast anyone? – the presents are opened, and nobody cares if you’re in your happy pants all day long, or don’t brush your hair, or don’t make conversation beyond: “Yes please, I’d love another of your pomegranate and cinnamon margaritas, son.”
Perhaps the problem is with the word “resolution”. A resolution suggests that things can be resolved, or solved: our health, eating, exercise, careers, finances, relationships, creative output, drinking, smoking, reading, good works, whatever.
There’s a finiteness to it. But the problem with the things we resolve to do is that they’re never really over, not until we die. It’s a matter of keeping doing or failing to do.
Going to gym once doesn’t mean you’re finished with exercise; phoning grandma once doesn’t mean you’re now an exemplary grandchild; giving up sugar today doesn’t mean celebrating sweet success with cake tomorrow.
These things don’t come with a full stop. They’re a lifetime’s struggle. We are setting ourselves up to fail.
I think we need a rebrand: we need new year’s aims. Unlike a resolution, an aim is a thing we can do once and then pat ourselves on the back.
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One new year, a friend decreed this would be the year she made her first meringue. She finally got around to it the following December and that proud pavlova became her Christmas dinner dessert.
So instead of resolving to eat healthily, why not aim to try one new vegetable, or to cook an old enemy in a new way?
Well, hello, roast Brussels sprouts. Instead of saying I want to read more, choose a book that you’d like to have read and aim to read that.
Instead of saying you want to take up chess, aim to play one game of chess. Instead of resolving to travel, choose one place and go there, even just a museum in your city.
Do one charitable work, sign up for one class online, meditate once, go on one hike, go to bed early once, watch the sunrise once.
And just maybe, flush with success, you’ll want to do it again. Happy New Year.
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