Don't Step Believing

I totally hear GMon’y’s point.  Why wait until January to do something you want to do to improve your own life?  Well, humans are interesting creatures.  Most of us aren’t totally happy with every aspect of our lives, but we feel nervous and scared about changing things.  A lot of the things we do, but don’t like that we do—such as smoking, drinking, eating excessively, not exercising enough, using bad language, being inconsiderate, not calling people enough, spending too much money, not enjoying life enough, buying too much make-up, etc.—we do for complex psychological reasons.  If anything, I’m sort of relieved that making New Year’s Resolutions is such a popular tradition.  It serves as evidence that I’m not the only crazy one out there.

This year, I’m focusing on religion and attending services regularly.  I often think of how I will raise my children in terms of spirituality, and yet I don’t usually go to my house of worship.  If I don’t do it now, why would I do it then?  Being a good parent is about being a good example.  And I would be a super-hypocrite if I suddenly became someone I’m not now just because impressionable kids are around.  So I’ve started doing that and it’s going fine.  I’m sure whatever happens will be what is ultimately right for me, what I’m comfortable with, and what will be positive for my entire family. 

I think that people make those important changes in their lives in January because a new year is the ultimate symbol of hope.  And when attempting to change major aspects of our lives, we need as much hope as possible.  We need to feel that the change can happen.  But according to my intensive research (i.e. Wikipedia), it can’t.  In a resolution study, 52% of people were confident that they would be successful in keeping their resolutions, but only 12% were.  But I don’t think it really matters.  I just think it’s cool that people resolve to change their lives.  There are societies in which people are truly complacent.  They don’t think about improving things in such a way.  But in America, we do.  However delusional, we imagine our best selves and we go for it.   And we’ve been doing that for long before Oprah Winfrey came into the picture.  I don’t mind that people fail in what they resolve to do, but I would hate it if they didn’t resolve.