Why I’m Not Making New Year’s Resolutions This Year
By: Rejoice Denhere
Tags: New Year, Self Improvement, Life Stories, New Year Resolution, Life

Why I’m Not Making New Year’s Resolutions This Year

Image by Nicola Giordano on Pixabay

The events of 2020 confirmed what I already knew but have never been able to prove. It’s the reason why I’m not making any new year’s resolutions for 2021. New year’s resolutions don’t work.

Every year I sit down during the last week of December frozen in panic. What will be my new year’s resolutions? I listen to other people’s ideas and if I like them, I use them. Or, I end up on the internet searching for “good” new year’s resolutions which I can adopt as my own.

You already know how this story ends. Halfway through the year, most, if not all, of those resolutions would be safely in the dust bin. This year the pandemic made that happen a lot sooner.

Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work

New year’s resolutions don’t work because life has a way of disrupting your best laid plans. In 2020 the worldwide pandemic just did it on a grander scale, bringing the world to a screeching halt.

Everyday, somewhere in the world someone’s life comes to a full stop. The reasons are many: health, unemployment, business failure, relationships, politics, but the consequences are always the same. Devastating. We don’t take notice because our lives are okay, because it’s happening to someone else.

When stuff happens to us it can feel as if our world has ended. And it would have ended — to a certain degree. We grieve over what could have been. Whatever we’d resolved to do is shelved and forgotten. That’s because twelve months is too long of a timeline. There are too many uncontrollable variables, too many actors in the play and we don’t have a crystal ball to help us see into the future.

My New Strategy

Bruce Lee once said:

You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.

This year I asked myself — What if I stop making new year’s resolutions and make daily resolutions instead? What if I become like water, shapeless and formless? Water takes on the shape of the container it is poured into — now. Decant it into a differently shaped container and it changes shape instantly. When it’s cold, it freezes, when it boils, it turns to steam.

Water adapts to its current circumstances by changing shape or form. It’s still water — its essence does not change, only its state changes.

My decision to adopt daily resolutions rather than yearly ones has largely been influenced by meditation practice. in 2020 I took meditation more seriously. It trains you to focus on the present.

Our minds tend to wander a lot. We live in the past, which has nothing new to say to us. Other times we live in the future, forgetting that the actions we take in the present are what creates our future.

Final Thoughts

I will live in the now and adapt when the situation calls for it. I will make daily resolutions which align with my values and the essence of who I am.

Someone once said:

Success is a series of small actions taken daily.

If I make daily resolutions to do the right thing, to adapt as and when necessary surely success will come. Surely a better a future awaits me.