The Case for (Breaking) New Year’s Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions. Whether you like or dislike them, chances are you’ve made them–about 73% of adults ages 30-65+ in the United States have. I know I have. Even if I haven’t called my goal a “resolution,” I’ve often felt a drive to pick a thing or two that I want to do more of in the new Gregorian year. Maybe it’s the desperately attractive promise of a “fresh” start or everyone around me feeling energized and implementing something new, the truth is I too have found myself lured into the “new year, new(er) me” frenzy.
But this piece isn’t about whether I make New Year’s Resolutions (I don’t) or whether I feel angry at the hyper commercialization and exploitation of our vulnerabilities that happens in the new year (I do). This piece is an invitation to question the judgment attached to an often-cited statistic about new year’s resolutions–that most people don’t end up keeping theirs and therefore have “failed.”
What bothers me is how we tend to view stopping or quitting something as failure. Now, don’t get me wrong. Given that the majority of resolutions set are around improving health and wellbeing, I believe it is important that we find tools and practices that are safe, accessible and sustainable for us. That being said, why is it that we use words like “abandoned,” “broken” and “failed” to describe the stopping of action around resolutions? (By the way, we do this with relationships, businesses, and other life things as well, but I’ll save that discussion for another day).
To me, even the process of getting to the “quitting” phase holds a ton to be celebrated and learned from.
For one, the passion, enthusiasm, hope, sense of possibility that leads us to even set the resolution is beautiful. This means there is active energy in us that wants to be channeled.
Second, the courage required to take the first step–especially a first step into something never experienced before–is not for the faint of heart. This step often takes so much physical, emotional and even spiritual energy.
Third, to take the second step (or third, or twentieth or one hundredth) requires effort, and only the person taking the steps knows what that entails.
And then, yes, there may come a day when we stop. And in that stopping, I’m proposing, there is wisdom not failure.
The narrative around resolutions is that we “lack the willpower,” “the discipline” to continue them, when in fact what might be happening is that the quantity and/or pace at which we introduced the new change was too much on our systems and too much signals “danger” to the body. We might also stop because we assume we’d like something (since apparently everyone’s someone is also doing it) and we find out we don’t. And we might also stop because we just aren’t feeling it anymore.
None of these reasons feel like failure to me. In fact, I sense intelligence, agency, and consent. Our wisdom is wanting to be heard through our no’s, not right now’s, no more’s. To stop–even if it's unconsciously–because something is too much or doesn’t resonate with us–isn’t failure. It’s an opportunity for reflection and discernment that are key in finding the practices that do align and resonate with who and where we are.
As you move through this month, here are my invitations:
Remember: Resolutions aren’t that big of a deal–they just aren’t–let’s not give them so much power that we feel beholden to them and feel like failures when they aren’t resonating with us anymore. We have the power and permission to start and stop something whenever we feel like it.
Ask: What good comes out of feeling like a failure, especially in the times in which we find ourselves? How will being harsh towards ourselves (or internalizing the harsh projected at us) lead us to be safer, more nourished, or freer? It won’t.
Notice: Let’s practice noticing what lights us up and what attracts our attention AND what dims our joy and feels laborious. We live in a world in which we believe everything must feel like work for it to be worthy. Let’s soften this. Being human is hard enough–have you noticed? Let’s find more of what’s easy.
Sending us lots of love. May we move through our days honoring the wisdom within.
