New Year resolution: a strange concept

So it’s not Christmas any more, it’s New Year. And all over town, strangulated voices are choking on their New Year resolutions. If you’re over 15 you already know that they probably involve high hopes and disappointment wrestling on a tightrope. And you know which entity will win.

Don’t read this as advice!

No no no, I am not offering advice, or wisdom. I’m just thinking in public. I’m reflecting on my own experience of being me.

But I do know one thing, thanks to having lived in this world for a while. If I feel like this, so do lots of other people. If that’s you, feel free to be you, and know that I understand. My gut feeling about resolutions has served me just fine over the last 84 years.

The concept of resolution doesn’t work with everybody

Thank goodness I’ve never understood resolutions. The word comes from resolve. I do like resolving little problems and conundrums: that’s a treat, isn’t it? But I’m far too wishy-washy a character to resolve to make a profound change or do a certain big thing, or any thing. Deep down I suspect I’m not strong or brave or gutsy enough to make a resolution, let alone carry it through. And luckily I don’t want to. I resist.

That’s probably why I like starting tiny habits. Love the concept and the science that says this is both kinder and more successful than making big bold resolutions. Love the fact that tiny habits have a clear-cut process and they usually work, and when they don’t work, that’s OK, nothing is lost.

Even goals and aims bother me

Yes, I do need to get my broken French doors replaced. I know that. And it’ll happen, this year, most likely. It’s on my to-do list, slowly working its way up to the top. If I made a New Year resolution to get them fixed this year, that would change only one thing: the chance that I will feel like a failure, feel guilty, feel like a person of weak moral fibre.

I’m not against other people having goals and aims and resolutions. I just don’t seem to be that sort of person.

Ideas and plans and projects are much more fun

I’m not short of ideas, I have plans, I have personal projects, and I love deadlines. I enjoy spreadsheets and my plate and Gantt charts and Urgent/Important charts and diaries and calendars and to-do lists. These things give shape to my work and play. They bring clarity, not pressure. That’s lucky, because I apply more than enough pressure to myself without adding the burden of a resolution. And strange to say, many of my ideas grow organically into plans which grow into projects. Which usually get done.

Here’s a New Year non-resolution

How about being floaty this year
floating your dreamy, hopey self
your good-enough
wishy-washy self
stroking your
straining, twisting self
whispering
it’s OK darling
it’s OK to be corporate
or busy or sleepy or woke.

You’re doing well
doing your best, as usual,
as you always have done
doing what you can do
and would do and will do
to save a tiny planet
of your own.

• New Year’s Resolutions statistics and trends (Drive Research)
• The psychology behind New Year’s resolutions that work (Psychology Today)
• 2020 was the Year of the Rat (Write Into Life, i.e. me)