Your Own. Personal. New Year.
Five resolutions about New Year's resolutions.
Not all expiration dates fall on December 31.
Nor do all due dates land on January 1.
In fact, most don’t.
So while receiving the transition of one year to the next as an invitation to endings and beginnings can be a helpful tool, it can also be a bit, well, forced.
Listen, change is inevitable. Change will come. (And, really, change is always happening). But that doesn’t mean change in your life has chosen to align with this particular spot at which planet earth has completed another lap around the sun. This is important to remember. Because while all the voices around you are howling NOW IS THE TIME FOR CHANGE, the reality is that your life runs on its own schedule.
So there’s no need to manufacture new rhythms or habits right now. No need to come up with new commitments or goals today. No need to put pressure on yourself to have the next twelve months figured out. No need to be resolute!
Playing these New Year’s games might end up being a distraction, delaying your journey to your intended destination. Even worse, derailing it, by interfering with your inner alignment and setting you off course.
With this in mind, here are five resolutions about New Year’s resolutions to help you embrace your own personal New Year—be it today or any other day—rather than unnecessarily adjusting your life to this current calendar year transition:
1. Shift from New Year’s DAY to New Year’s MONTH.
Sometimes you get an epiphany. And it shifts how you see everything. It provides clarity about your course of action. But more often, it takes time to discern the irrelevant operating patterns that you need to leave behind and the new possibilities that you need to step into.
Don’t demand anything from yourself today. Instead, give yourself a season of time—perhaps the entire month of January—to locate and reconnect with yourself (especially after the holidays!), identify the questions you are carrying, and give them space to speak to you about what, if anything, needs to shift in your life right now.
2. Declare Happy OLD Year!
Part of why people have such a hard time keeping their New Year’s resolutions—for example, only something like 3% of people who start a diet, stick with it, and keep the weight off—is because they get so fixated on embracing the new that they forget to let go of the old. But ignoring the old inhibits the new from sticking.
The paradox of allowing the new to emerge and grow is that it is also essential to appropriately retire the old. Don’t just sweep it under the rug or hide it in the closet. At first, stay close to the old. Examine the pattern, the habit, the way of relating. Don’t judge it. Wonder about what it gave you, how it protected you, why it was a part of your healing journey. And then… thank that smaller version of yourself, tell it that it no longer has a role to play, and let go.
3. Be okay with New Year, SAME Me
Yes, as the ancient book of Ecclesiastes says, there is…
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot…
a time to tear down and a time to build
There also is a time for everything between those polarities. In other words, life isn’t all endings and beginnings, destruction and creation. There is a time for maintenance. A time for continuing on with what already is, as it is. A time for riding the wave you’re already on.
Maybe that time for you is right now. Because last July you went through a major shift as a relationship ended, or you know that you’re leaving your job next April. But neither of those are right now. Right now is a time for carrying on!m For staying on your path! So don’t get caught up in the frenzy around you of fabricating a monumental shift right now. Doing so may interfere with the rest you need from the previous shifts you’ve undergone or the recharging you need for the days ahead.
4. Throw away your calendar.
Here’s my big point: don’t let society dictate when you need to change. Don’t outsource to a calendar your process of adapting. Because there are two major downsides: the first, which I’ve already mentioned, is that you force change when it isn’t called for.
But the second is perhaps an more serious problem: when you rely too much on the Gregorian calendar, your inner change detection system atrophies. Since New Year’s is the time for change, I can just wait for January 1 to worry about it, you think. Now, of course, no one really consciously thinks this, but perhaps we make such a big deal about New Year’s resolutions because most of us run on autopilot in our daily lives. We’d rather not get too reflective about how we need to change or grow or evolve. But we do so at our own peril, suffering the consequences of living an unexamined life, feeling stuck, carrying on irrelevant patterns of behavior, and causing harm. All because of our failure to adapt. And failure to adapt is failure to thrive.
5. Go within.
If you are setting New Year’s resolutions, it is worth asking yourself Who is setting these resolutions? Is it little you or BIG YOU? Small self or Big Self? Is it your surface identity or the deepest, truest part of yourself?
This is an important question to ask. Because if small self is setting the agenda, you are going to get to the end of this next year and still feel disappointed, perhaps even ashamed. Whatever you accomplish will still not be enough. Your ego will not be satisfied.
But if you prioritize going within, if you tend to your inner life, then you will be connected with your heart. Your ego will be surrendered to your Soul. Your Big Self will shine through. What you do will flow from who you truly are. From there, any and all resolutions will resolve themselves. Whether you “achieve” them or not, you will find fulfillment.
So there you have it. My five resolutions about New Year’s resolutions. Having said all of this, I am no New Year’s Grinch—HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope your 2025 is filled with so much kindness and beauty!