An Actual New Year’s Resolution

Don’t give up on New Year’s resolutions. Just think about them differently

Pexels image by Cottonbro

In 1999 I resolved to do a Taebo workout tape every day. Fueled by the exciting, tipsy, happy-hour vibe of December — it seemed like a good idea. And I didn’t even make it to February.

Lots of us have just stopped making resolutions at all. Choosing to express gratitude instead. But maybe there is a glimmer of loss in that choice. Like, we miss it?

So what is it that fuels our collective longing for a New Year, a new you declaration? Even if we don’t totally believe it. What makes us want to keep trying?

I think it’s Kairos time. Chronos time is our Gregorian calendar and our clock. Kairos is a Greek word that describes the spirit of the time. I think of it as the place where kids live before they know how to read clocks. The place when we feel things happening and experience them just as they are — when things happen at just the right time without our contriving.

And this time of year, whether you are in the dark and cold Northern Hemisphere or the sunshiny, Southern warm places — we are all at the halfway part of the year. The solstice is a natural time to stop. To reflect. To consider where you were and what you did. And what you might want to do differently for the next half.

Pausing to reflect back and look ahead is a natural instinct. We are animals that belong to this world. We feel the halfway point of the solstice in our body. Making a declaration to join the gym on January 1st is part of this instinct, distorted by culture. When viewed through the prism of Capitalism, a longing to care for ourselves better gets translated into buying a gym membership. Paying for a membership, and even going to the gym every day can have little to do with learning to care for ourselves better.

And we are living in times of radical change in culture. These changes are happening inside of us and outside of us. Changing how we want to conceive of and relate to our work, families, and ourselves. And as we live into this wobbly new world with our new ways of thinking — what we find ourselves doing instead are things that feel right in our bodies. We can anchor ourselves in things that feel right in our…