Resolutions
As someone who recently made a hard decision that changed my life for the better (at least, I believe it changed my life for the better, though since I can only live the one choice, I really have no clue if it would have been better the other way, right?), this article in the Harvard Business Review struck close to home. I felt like things were being done to me, though in reality, the control was there all along. I just wasn’t exercising it until I exercised it.
Like this line: “you can choose to believe that the right actions will lead to the right feelings, rather than the other way around.” I need to believe that more in 2018.
I’m not big on setting resolutions; not because I don’t think there are things I should change in my life, but because the biggest problems are not always apparent on January 1st. For instance, the issue above didn’t even start until the spring, and I didn’t realize it was a negative aspect of my life until I was several months into the situation. That was a resolution I needed to make on the fly to take care of myself.
If I had to set one thing, I need more sleep. We were so good about getting in bed at a reasonable time for a very short period of time last year, and then we went back to our old, unhelpful ways. We need to hang a sign in our room reminding ourselves to stick with the bedtime routine until it becomes a habit.
What are your resolutions this year?
8 comments
I stopped making resolutions a few years ago, as I found that I never kept them and then just felt worse for failing. I do choose a word for the year, to remind me of where my focus should be. That has been more useful to me.
My word for 2018 is health.
Being brave is my resolution. To sit with the fear and discomfort, trusting that there will be a road forward. I haven’t been good about this recently and need to do better.
And have the same bad habit about sleep.
I don’t make resolutions usually. I think like you do, that things don’t always happen in January, or that January is necessarily the right time to make some changes. That being said, I have lost 65 pounds since June, and my resolution going into the new year is to keep it up and to be nice to myself when counting calories gets hard.
My main resolution (hope?) is to have the house (and my mind) in shape for a new baby in January (February?). Manage the GDin the meantime. After that…not sure. Have a social life and connect with other moms while I’m at home. Transition to parenting 2 (who knows what that will be like). Actually read some of the books I’ve been planning to. Maybe I could start by finding where the devil I hid my Kobo.
Not a resolution person either, but I’ve been working on getting to bed earlier too.
I’m not a resolution person either. Like you and others, I do need to get better about getting to bed at a decent hour.
I do wonder if I should have a word for the year…”patience” would definitely be the one I need right now in my life with the kids.
More sleep is a good one! I don’t really do resolutions, or at least I don’t do them well. If I was going to set a goal for 2018, it would be to dedicate more time for writing, to waste less time on my phone, to be more fully present and attentive to whatever I’m doing. Yeah. Those sound pretty good.
Happy New Year to you!
Interesting how “fake it til you make it” has some merit here. I remember my dad telling my sisters and me when we had nothing to do, to go outside and pretend we were having fun. Sure enough, inevitably, the neighbors would come out and soon we were all laughing and playing and having fun.
Seems like that’s what HBR is saying about right actions leading to right feelings.
Still, I don’t tend to do resolutions, at least not because of a date on the calendar.