New Year's Resolutions

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. Maybe it's because I don't have a great track record of keeping them all year. The things I determine to do -- eat healthy, spend wisely, accomplish more goals -- are recurring goals in my life that don't need a specific day to put them in place.

The things I want to change -- more patience, more tolerance, less criticism -- likewise, I don't need a certain date to remind me of those parts of me that are less than perfect.

Nonetheless, we all love clean slates, myself included. Even though nothing has really changed, except for the date on the calendar, we like to think that maybe everything has changed. That maybe that thing that plagued us in 2013 won't follow us into the new year. Maybe that one turn of the calendar page will bring the end of an addiction, a long-standing feud or a bothersome habit.

If only it were that easy.

I posted this quote on my Facebook page on New Year's Day, by T.S. Eliot: “For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.” 

That statement made me think. What have I accepted as impossible in my life, that maybe isn't so impossible after all? What if I stopped listening to the negative voices in my head that said something was impossible, and just went for it? What if I stopped looking at all the reasons something wouldn't work, and instead focused on how it might just work after all?

It's a lot to ponder, and probably too much for one blog, but it did give me a renewed vision. 

So in 2014, I'm not going to commit to any of the typical resolutions. Instead, my resolution is this: I'm going to think about the things I really want to do, which include write a book, go to India with my family, move into a bigger (but still very affordable) house with a backyard, and then I'm just going to work on ways to do them. That's it. I'm not going to resolve to necessarily do any of those things, because I don't want to look back at the end of 2014, if I didn't get any of them accomplished, and feel like it was a failure somehow. But I'm going to resolve to actively work on them, and silence the negative chatter that clutters my mind.

And who knows? At the end of the year, I may be blogging about how I achieved each of those goals? It's possible. It really, really is.

Anyone have any of their own big (or small) resolutions they want to share?

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”  ~Walt Disney