I have never really cared for New Year Resolutions. I've never bothered making them and when I did, I have never bothered sticking to them.
Part of the reason is that I see the process of setting goals in a quarterly fashion rather than an annual fashion.
because 1 one year is too long a period to remain focused on a goal. We tend to lose motivation. We also lack discipline
because 1 year is too long a period to exert effort consistently to make progress.
However, over the past week, I have noticed how New Year Resolutions is a form of reminders and the greater purpose reminders serve
For example, when I was in school our teachers would always encourage us to celebrate our mothers during mothers day. They'd tell us how we should buy her a gift, give her a hug and tell her how much we love her.
My dad would always scoff at this idea saying "You should celebrate mothers day every day, not just today." Heck, every year during mothers day - posts like my dad's comment would do the rounds on social media.
But I think there's one thing my dad or those posts don't account for. And that is that humans are in constant need for reminders. This is true whether you look at it in a religious or practical setting. This is true from the time Prophets were sent to certain groups of people as a reminder to follow God and it certainly is true in a time where we cannot function without reminder notifications popping up in our phones alerting us to that important meeting or phone call.
The more you have of something, the less you appreciate it. So when there is a set day recognized globally as Mothers Day, it serves as a reminder to appreciate our moms, reflect on how we can make life better for them and to renew our intentions to show excellence towards her. In other words, letting our reflections guide our actions.
The same goes for events like International Women's Day. The same goes for your birthday. The same goes for New Year Resolutions.
The point is that we can look at NY Resolutions as an instrument of reflection rather than an instrument of action/change. This doesn't mean the action is bad - but if we reflect we are more likely to stick through our actions for a longer period of time because there is a stronger "why" behind it.
After some reflection and some inspiration from a video a friend sent me, here are my New Year Resolutions;
To stop cursing
To stop lying
I have made the intention this year to treat NY Resolutions as an opportunity to fine-tune rather than change. I think this counters the above-said flaws of resolutions. If we can set aside the desire to blindly implement huge changes to our lives like journaling every day or losing 20kg or being more outgoing (because we know we are going to fail given the timeline is 1 long year) and instead we focus on letting our reflections guide our resolutions, maybe 2022 will be the year we actually achieve them.
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