This year, a search for the best resolutions
Ah, the first week of January.
The best time of year to stroll through the graveyard of my New Year’s resolutions.
Take a walk with me, won’t you?
For — despite what the self-help books, the motivational speakers, and the life hackers tell you — you’re probably going to fail at your resolutions this year, too.
We are all on the Good Ship Failure together, I’m afraid. None of us is going to lose 20 pounds. We’re not going to eat healthier or learn a new language.
We won’t possess chic, minimalist closets by this time next year. If we haven’t already started jogging regularly, it’s not likely to happen this month.
Last, but certainly not least, 2018 will not be the
If we haven’t already started jogging regularly, it’s not likely to happen this month.
year our blogs and personal podcasts blow up and start delivering passive income streams.
I realize I sound cynical. However, I have experience.
In 2009, for example, I made a classic new year’s resolution: I was going to attend yoga classes five times a week.
It sounded perfectly reasonable at the time. I was already attending, and loving, classes two or three times a week.
But my yoga teacher was a strict, sinewy vegan who rose each morning at 4 to complete two hours of her own practice before leading the rest of us at 6. As she whipped her body through pose after pose, she’d tell the rest of us that anyone who practiced fewer than five times per week wasn’t serious.
It’s a mark of how young I
was that I took these kinds of statements as a personal challenge. The smart thing to do would have been to run from the studio and inform the authorities about a cult in our midst.
But I persisted ... for all of two weeks. Then, around Jan. 13, I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. Half an hour later, when I finally got up, it was too late to go to class.
The sun was rising. I was able to notice things in my apartment I hadn’t seen for the past two weeks. Such as: my empty refrigerator and dying houseplant. There was a stack of unopened mail by the door, and a strange smell that I later traced back to my overflowing recycling bin.
I hauled the bin outside, firm in the only resolution that mattered for the rest of 2009: Maybe strict sinewy vegans can balance five yoga classes a week with the rest of their lives, but I can’t.
I’ve tried and failed at other resolutions, too.
There was a flirtation with a Spanish-language Rosetta Stone in 2007.
In 2010, I was insane enough to begin the year with a Gwyneth Paltrow-style cleanse.
I lost 4 pounds but gained the worst mood of my life. I’m still ashamed of the way I snapped at an unsuspecting store clerk during my descent into ketosis. When the week was over, I was so happy to see rice and fruit that I didn’t care about gaining back the weight.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized any lasting change I’ll make in my life is unlikely to happen as a result of a decision on Jan. 1.
The major transformations I’ve made have all come about over years of hard work, determined effort and occasional backsliding. That’s also true for most of the people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet.
But here’s the good news: Recognizing that most New Year’s resolutions fail can be freeing, not depressing.
I still make resolutions. Now, I just choose ones with lower stakes.
Two years ago, instead of trying to knuckle my way into a new language, I resolved to watch one foreign film per week.
It worked! So last year, instead of committing to five days of grueling exercise per week, I took four new kinds of dance classes in the month of January. That worked, too. What was even crazier was the fact that I actually enjoyed striving to meet both of these resolutions.
I enjoyed them so much, I haven’t yet chosen a self-improvement plan for 2018.
I’ve narrowed it down to three contenders: I might pledge to dance in my kitchen every morning, to drink more Champagne, or to get a facial every season. Or maybe all three — at last, I’ve think I’ve found the kinds of resolutions I can honor.