By Joseph Rutakangwa
1. Why wait until January 1st?
There are about 365 days in a year, each with 24 hours. A year can start from February 5th to February 4th or any other day. Why wait until January 1st to start your new year’s resolution? And who waits all year to decide on doing something – which they claim to be of utmost importance? A procrastinator.
By January 1st, you’re off the holidays and the thought of having to plow through 365 days overwhelms you. Before you have even started your new year’s resolution, you give up. This is how January 17th became the famous “Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day.”
Making each one of the 365 days your special decision-making day will save you many troubles in this life.
2. Is it what you want or what you think you want?
Eat healthy, get in shape, make new friends, reduce stress, and sleep at least 8 hours a night.
They’re all great plans for a new year. But are they great plans for YOU. Do you really want to stop drinking soda? I know I don’t. Do you really want new friends? Do you really want to sleep 8 hours or you would much rather watch the English premier league?
Most of the time the end goals of these resolutions are to meet others’ expectations and fit in. You may have been searching for ideas for your resolution over the internet. These ideas represent what you think you should do but not what you actually want to do. When a resolution “fails” it only means that you ended up doing what you wanted to do. So, why go through all the trouble of trying to be who you’re not?
Look at what you really want and do that. You won’t even need motivation or an accountability buddy because you would be doing what your heart, mind, and body want.
Watch a video I made on Accepting What You Truly Want
You can also watch another video on how to know what you truly want here.
3. You will be happier, right?
Think about this…
You feel bad about where you are in life today. You set your new year’s resolution to put your life in a much better place. You fail after a month. You feel bad about yourself.
The cycle continues.
Where is happiness? You end up in this cycle because you set goals. The problem with goals is that they damage your self-assurance, your pride. They make you feel cheap. You set goals to become a better person and live a better life as though you are not.
If there’re always things you lack today and desire to have in the future, have you ever had anything? Will you ever have anything? Because the things that you need most in your life are always in your future, hence having goals.
In the case that you reach your goal, what will follow? A new goal. And the next one, then another one. So, when are you ever happy and satisfied?
You want to eat healthily? Go buy veggies, NOW! Don’t plan to start buying veggies from January 1st.
Live in the present.
4. What does it mean to you?
Perhaps you have not even started to execute your plans for this year, perhaps you have. The point is, you need to be sure you’re up for the task until it’s complete. You might be highly motivated today but motivation only gives us the initial boost to start executing our plans. After your motivation wears off, only commitment will take you to the end. If you are not committed, you are more likely to quit.
The thing is, you’re pursuing a goal that doesn’t mean anything to you. A new year’s resolution is not relevant to your own personal story. You need a goal coming from your inner self. You need to pursue a goal which is based on what matter’s to you most. An easy way to identify this goal is to look at your story.
So, what’s your story?
Life is for living, tap into it.
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