Instead of resolutions, choose a single word for the year
MANILA, Philippines - Sarah Manguso’s poem, “A Glittering,” opens with this line: “One mourner says if I can just get through this year as if salvation comes in January.”
For a lot of people, the New Year signals a fresh start and a chance to move on from what always seems to be a sucky year. “Please be kind to me,” go the countless pleas to the next year, as if the year can help it. And then there are the resolutions.
Resolutions come in many forms; they’re pledges to become a “better” person, often guided by the mistakes of the past, often made in January, though everyone probably knows that they can be formed in the middle of the year. They’re guidelines to what a person envisions a better life to be: eat healthier, exercise at least three times a week, travel to new places, take a class, be more chill.
I’m personally not as obsessive about resolutions as some people are. To be honest, I kind of forget about them around March, which is probably why they don’t work out for me. Sometimes I run into my proclaimed, yet unmet, resolutions like I run into a barely familiar person that I now have to awkwardly acknowledge, even if I really, really don’t want to.
For 2015, I just wanted to stop floating on by. I did a lot of aimless floating in 2014, so I Googled and YouTubed around to see what other people’s plans were. I decided to adopt someone’s idea of having a single word to come back to for the rest of the year. It’s easier to remember a word rather than a whole list, and it can kind of guide all your decisions for the coming year. This woman’s word was “Simplify.” My best friend, Isa, decided to ask herself a simple question for 2015: “Is this good for me?”
I was going to go with both, but then I found my own phrase to remember for the entire year: “Be intentional.”
MAGIC NUMBERS
There are a lot of magic numbers — 21, 30, 66 — that tell you how many days you have to keep at a task to make it into a habit. The truth is, it all depends on how much you want it. Most people fail at their New Year’s resolutions after the first month. Apparently, you are three times more likely to accomplish your goal if you make it past the first-month hump, so remember to make those 30 or so days count.
We have roughly around 355 days left in the year, and some people have probably failed at some of their resolutions already or tucked them in a space in their brain that eventually forgets. The great thing about growth is that you can start any time you want to. You can’t expect immediate results and at times, the sheer frustration of the impossibility of your goal can get the better of you. If it’s too hard, let it pass then try again. There are no rules against trying and failing and trying again, so don’t give up.
Find the time to work on your goals and be intentional. The 52 books you challenged yourself to read this year aren’t going to read themselves. You can’t be healthier if you don’t spend time making your meals healthy. No one flies to another country without saving up for it. It won’t always be easy, but at least you know you’re doing right by yourself by pushing yourself to grow past the bubble you were in the year before.
But if all else fails, there’s always next year.
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