New year, new outlook
Enough of the self-inflicted, toxic cycle of failed resolutions: let’s recalibrate them as gettable goals and realise that the mastery of small things is an achievement too, writes Ufrieda Ho
The story goes that it was the ancient Babylonians who kicked off the idea of new year’s resolutions. It was a kind of bargaining with the gods — grand mortal intention for a nod from the divine. Fast forward a couple of millennia and the Babylonians aren’t around any more to attest to how the promise to hold themselves to unattainable goals at each rotation around the sun worked out for them.
But while the Babylonians have passed into long-ago history, the idea of making a promise to be better mortals marked off against passing days on a calendar is something that’s endured. Of course, optimism, endeavour and maybe even a dose of wishful thinking are the good part of human wiring — we want to screw our courage to the sticking place and there’ sa rush when we find the guts to give challenging things a go.
The darker side of our nature, though, is that we’re prone to overestimating our abilities and we tend to beat ourselves up when things inevitably go pear-shaped. Too many unmet goals and failures later, we feel cut down at the knees. Bowed and disappointed, our negativity sours to selfcriticism, self-sabotage and eventually we swear off setting goals altogether.
This self-inflicted, toxic cycle of making resolutions we can’t live up to is overdue for disruption. Resolutions are better off recalibrated as gettable goals. We can choose goals, disciplines and practices that can help shift our mindsets, reset our concept of value, hone our intuitive knowledge, win us back the in-breaths — long enough to recall Blake’s kiss to “the joy as it flies” and to come to the realisation that mastery of small things is an achievement too.
Here are some non-resolutions to try:
Learn to sew on a button — the world needs us to need less. By learning a few sewing techniques we can darn socks, fix a ripped hem and make a button stay stuck. By giving our clothes a second life we take purposeful action to pause fast fashion and curb our overconsumption. We gain new skills and add to the solution rather than the problem of tons of our old clothes ending up in landfills and incinerators.
Trust your nose and your gut — expiry dates, sell-by dates and best-before dates are advances for food safety but they’re guidelines, not gospel. Over time, we’ve handed over our better judgment to things like retailers’ stickers. We’ve forgotten that in that not-so-long-ago time our grannies knew better. With a whiff they knew when food had gone bad. By touch and eyeballing they assessed produce for optimal freshness and food safety. And we ate at their tables and lived! It’s a reminder that we need more common sense, not more direction from labels.
Solve the Rubik’s Cube — mastery of something seemingly insignificant is a win. Maybe it’s the Rubik’s Cube that’s stumped you since you were 10 years old, maybe it’s that you have never been able to use chopsticks or that your cookies have always been duds. Commit to undoing one of your old “I can’t” stories. It’s not going to change the world, but it will change how you see yourself in the world.
Multitask less — we’ve allowed ourselves to become ever-busier people and we like to moan about it, too. We do battle with to-do lists and deadlines while we explain yet again to our ageing parents how to use the TV remote. There are PTA things to get done and the dog needs walking. Truth is, we’re no good for anyone when we’re in a distracted rush. Give yourself the licence to practise drinking coffee, rather than gulping it down as you dash out the door. Try catching up with your friends without checking your phone — not once. It will ring if someone needs you urgently. And play fetch one more time with your dog because a gobby stick brought back by your good girl is its own beautiful gift.
Grow something — get your windowsill herb garden going this year or give your dead orchid another chance to be the Lazarus plant. Choosing to coax life into seeds and soil without an expectation of how it turns out is dabbling in exquisite alchemy.
Say “yes”—“no” is for setting boundaries and putting the brakes on people-pleasing. But saying “yes” to yourself is exploring where your personal edges can be pushed. Maybe it’s that you like stinky cheese after all, or yoga is for you. It could be that the people in the meet-up group turn out to be your kind of like-minded. “Yes” flattens our unfounded fears and shakes up our assumptions. We become braver by opening our minds: exactly what gazing upon a new year asks of us.