Dear You,
New Year Resolutions are Pointless (or at least that is what I thought)
LOL …. Resolutions? I can’t even achieve last year’s one.
To be fair, I don’t even think I gave it much thought at all. Between rushing to finish all the holiday homework, lamenting over the sheer amount of food I ate during Christmas celebrations and the money I spent on gift exchanges, the coming of every new year was simply something that just happened.
There was no concrete plan for the year ahead beyond “I really need to finish questions 1-10 if not Mr. Lim will kill me” or “how many questions can I not do and get away with?” There was no time spent doing serious goal settings since everyone around me talked and joked about how they already couldn’t meet their goals from the previous year. In fact, there was no difference between 31 December and 1 January to me. I would still date my worksheets wrong weeks into the new year, and I would still feel like I was the same person I was weeks before January started.
Yet, the one thing I was curious about was why people still bothered to keep to the “tradition” after years of supposed failures in meeting their resolutions.
Understanding resolutions
Perhaps an answer I could offer is this: it provides people with a clear direction to work towards. Sounds a bit obvious doesn’t it? However, in practice we come to realise just how often we not only overlook this, but also how we tend to underestimate just how valuable this one easy task is.
In reality, resolutions are no different from the plans we made over the end-of-year holiday that just passed. In listing out fun things to do off the top of our heads like hanging out with our friends or setting aside a day to play video games, we are actually making a commitment. A commitment not quite in the sense of definitively achieving our aims, but a commitment of taking that first step towards it.
If we really stopped to think about it, it genuinely is rather impossible to always meet every single one of our friends and to unlock a whole list of game achievements whenever we wanted to. And yet, we still continue to do the same thing of keeping in mind the things we want to achieve every holiday and try very hard to make time for it as it is important to us.
In the same way, “failure” to meet New Year’s Resolutions doesn’t spell out abandoning the whole system. Moreover, it even highlights the recognition that it is, indeed, something valuable as it can help us better focus our time around the things in life that are truly important to us; the same way that our friends, games and enjoyment dictate our holidays.
Also, resolutions are also yet another means of centering Christ in our lives. I think that often times, we may recognise that our faith in God is important – but still not take any concrete steps to show that in our actions and day-to-day activities. Instead of keeping God at the back of our minds and confining Him to Saturday services, how about we bring the idea that the Christian life is a daily act of service to the forefront of our minds? We do this by factoring in the time He has blessed us with to do His work; whether it be in serving in church, dedicating time to read His word daily or to be productive with things like our studies. This is because ultimately our time is given by God and we are to be living sacrifices for Him, which means honouring Him with our time and naturally, resolutions fall under this in our effort to plan our time.
Undertaking resolutions
Though everyone is different, personally my struggle was always to have a lofty end goal to reach by the end of the year. However, in having big and seemingly unattainable targets, they seemed both too difficult to start on and too distant in the future for me to concern
myself with.
Consequently, the way I fought that was to have goals that were big enough to scare me, but not to the point where I wouldn’t dare to start on it. By having one large, central goal and subsequently breaking it down further into more workable mini goals, it appeared more tangible. Additionally, it helped me overcome my lack of motivation and tendency to procrastinate, since my time suddenly shifted from looking like a whole continuous year to smaller bulks of weeks and months to achieve something I wanted for myself.
You might still be wondering what the point in all this is. And I think this is when I invite you to ponder over the past year you experienced and try to recall the regrets, accolades and times you can barely remember. If your life was like mine – a blur with no notable, personal achievements – then maybe herein lies the point. Previously, I often kickstarted the year fixated on whatever immediate work I had and just lived life day-by-day. Though I might have had some things I wanted to achieve, my habit of not committing to them in the form of clearly writing or articulating them always hindered me from ever embarking on them properly. To me then, there was always time to do them. That is, until time ran out and I quickly found myself at the end of yet another year. Since time is not only limited but also given from God, how to wisely spend it the entire year instead of just during the holidays seems like something we should all take time to consider this first month of 2020.
So, what is your resolution this year?
With Love: Noah