It seems almost cliché for me to write about New Year’s Resolutions today. Really, I mean, I’ve had a dry spell from runnerchica land for many months, and today is the day I come back with this great, clever article on resolutions? On January 1? Making writing a resolution for me is so much like a “no duh” it’s almost ridiculous.
But, the thing is, it’s a good thing we have things like New Year’s Day. Imagine if life were just one big continuum, days flowing into the next, with no real reasons set aside for us to evaluate how things are going, and what we need to improve on. Where would we be? Would we all be chain smoking, overweight non-exercising workaholics with sugar addictions, alcohol problems and poor diets who don’t spend time with their families? All because we didn’t have one day set aside to resolve to be better; at least for a little bit?
I’d like to think not. While New Year’s Day and resolutions are quite handy for bringing on personal transformations, I’d like to throw it out there that we really don’t need this particular day to turn things around. First of all, we know that resolutions don’t always work. How many times have you heard of someone’s grand plans to “work less” “eat better” or “exercise 4 days a week” only to see them crash and burn by January 15? Yeah, that’s happened more often than not for sure.
What I’d like to propose is that the idea behind New Year’s – that of fresh starts and new possibilities – is what we need to pay attention to. This concept is where the magic can happen, and it can happen any day of the year. Let’s face it, we all know deep down inside the changes we need to make in our lives to be healthier, happier, and less stressed. And, we know what we need to do to make these changes. It’s just putting the two together – the knowing with the action- that makes the equation complete, and changes our lives. For example, let’s take a hypothetical person… one who really wants to get some serious writing done, and make it a part of her daily routine. Logically, she knows that she’s going to need to set aside some time each day to do this. She knows she’s had this goal in the past, and has even tried to set a schedule to make this happen. That schedule worked for a week or two, but then the goal of daily writing became less important. She stopped writing daily and soon it wasn’t even something she did once a week. Yet, it remained important enough to not leave her mind, so on January 1, she figures it’s as good a time as any to dust off that keyboard and try again.
Totally hypothetical, of course.
We’ve all been in that situation, haven’t we? Had a goal, left the starting gates with tons of motivation, only to find that goal a distant memory weeks later. Yet, if that goal is something that’s truly important to us, we can bet it’ll come up again, and beg us to give it another shot. So we will. We’ll do this until we finally get it that there are certain things in life we just need to decide to do (ONCE AND FOR ALL) because they are important to our life plan.
Personally, I’m using New Year’s Day to again try to nail this daily writing habit. I’m combining it with my love of running, and have committed to #writeandrun31, compliments of some really dedicated runners/vegans at nomeatathlete.com. For every day in January, I will run and write, and write about my running and writing on Facebook… to keep myself accountable. We do what we can to help marry desire with action, right?
imrunnerchica.com 