No Resolutions!

I don’t know if New Year’s Resolutions are still a big thing these days.

Years past people have made big vows (lose weight, stop smoking), medium vows (finish writing novel, walk more) and small vows (give up chocolate shakes, text friends more).

Some resolutions are no brainers (learn a new creative art), others are impossible (lose 20 pounds in two weeks).

It seems we are never satisfied with ourselves, so we pick one “official” day to go cold turkey and turn our lives around.

Of course, such an abrupt stop and start often doesn’t work out, because we don’t change the energy around such abrupt changes. 

We can’t eat a pound of chocolate chip cookies one day and give them up forever the next. We can’t start walking five miles a day when we can barely walk to the corner and back. 

We all get very lofty with our new resolutions, and become depressed and disillusioned when we don’t fulfill them within a few weeks.

I have stopped making New Year’s Resolutions.

Life is hard enough without bringing the wrath of Armageddon down upon myself for non compliance.

What I have been doing is changing my life one step at a time. I am changing, even though it’s at a pretzel logic pace. 

We don’t buy snacks like chips and cookies and junk food anymore. To compromise, I do make homemade banana bread and pineapple smoothies. I don’t walk a marathon every day (as the small of my back protests) but I do walk up and down the stairs at least five times a day. I no longer have novel writing in the near future, but between blogging and making suncatchers and drawing and a few other creative ventures I’m kept quite alert mentally.

I believe every day is a chance to improve your lot in life. I laugh because I’m always saying “I learned something new today!” The things I learn (and sometimes later forget) aren’t earth shattering — but they are things I’ve never known about my whole life.

I look in the mirror every morning and ask myself what I can do to improve what I’ve been carrying around for 70+ years. A haircut? Undereye cream? Get rid of clothes that don’t fit?

New Year’s resolutions are more of a marker in life. Ideas and wishes that have crystalized into a determination to do something sooner than later.

I say — let’s just work on ourselves one day at a time. Work to to learn something new, eat healthier, move move. No time restrictions — just a mental note that you achieved something yesterday and will do so again today.

Let’s let the resolutions disappear into the mist, leaving a good heart and good vibrations in its wake.  

YOU CAN DO IT!!!