A No Year’s Resolution
The False Promise of New Year’s Resolutions
So, there’s this gym now that brings exercise equipment in for New Years day but replaces it with a wine bar about two weeks later. A meme I saw on Facebook. Funny? Because it reflects a little bit of reality, right? We hate making New Year’s resolutions, don’t we? But we keep making them and breaking them, year after year. At least many of us do.
But it’s normal, even healthy, after a Holiday season of parties and feast days to think about making a change for the next year. Yet we know that resolutions don’t work, at least they haven’t yet. So, let’s do something different this year. Something that works. Let’s think of one or two areas of our lives that we’d like to improve, make a realistic plan to do it, and then follow through.
Crafting a Vision for Change
In his best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey recommends a unique way to decide what to improve in our lives. By imagining our funeral. Morbid? Not really, because he advises us to imagine what people would say they remember about us. More importantly, what we would want people to say they remember about our lives and to be proactive by doing some things that help us become that kind of person.
Use your calendar or to-do list as a tool to become who you want to be. Do you want to be remembered as a person who loved their family? Put time with them on your calendar. Someone who gave back to their community? Schedule time at your favorite non-profit as a volunteer. Someone who was more spiritual than material? Put church, synagogue, or spiritual disciplines on your to-do list.
Establishing Realistic Goals
Would you like to be remembered as someone who was healthy, positive, energetic? Then we’re going to have to improve our physical fitness too. Make a fitness plan and put that on your calendar as well. Get some help if you need to, for this or any other area that you want to improve.
Don’t overdo it, pick a couple of areas to improve and start small. If it’s your fitness level, consider taking a brisk walk for twenty minutes or so a few days a week. Or use a workout video. Join a gym or get some fitness bands to use for strength training. But write it down, make an “appointment” with yourself, put it on your schedule and honor it like you would any other important appointment. Because it is important.
Finding Your Why for Lasting Change
Lastly, to be successful we need to think about why we want to improve something. If it’s your fitness, think about how you’ll feel when you meet your goals. Happy, empowered, confident? That’s your why! But let’s not stop with physical fitness.
Thinking about how we’d like people to remember us, I’d bet that when all is said and done, you’d like to be remembered as someone who had a positive impact on others. Take it from anyone who’s ever served as a volunteer; having been useful, a positive influence, or helped a person who really needed help is one of the most uplifting and satisfying feelings a person can have. That’s another why.
So, let’s do this. Take some time off. Go to a beach, a park, or just somewhere quiet and restful and think about how you would want to be remembered. Write that down, find your why, make a plan, put it on your calendar. Keep it realistic; small improvements are better than no improvement at all. You can do this.