By Brooke Guttenberg, M.S.
With 2014 just around the corner, my initial ideas for this week’s blog naturally gravitated toward starting fresh for the new year and how to keep those New Year’s resolutions. However, while congress has yet to pass a law that resolutions shall not be broken, I decided to take a different approach to the matter. Rather than focus on how to establish and maintain one’s resolutions for the new year, I’d like to take a differing perspective. I am proposing the hypothesis that many of us, including myself, may not have achieved everything we sought to accomplish over the past year. Instead of causing ourselves anxiety and depression as we analyze the past year, there are certainly healthier ways to ring in 2014.
Categories can be very comforting at times: good versus bad, happy versus sad, etc… It seems neater to tuck our evaluations into a nicely labeled box; however, is this all-or-nothing and black-and-white thinking logical? For instance, if I declare that 2013 was a bad year because I did not achieve all of my New Year’s resolutions, is this fact or fiction? While the year may have been filled with some rough spots and disappointments, can I really say that the entire year was all bad? Moreover, is it helpful to think this way?
While I could tell myself I should have tried harder or accomplished more, I am failing to acknowledge all that I have done in 2013. Additionally, like 100% of the world, I too can be a fallible human-being. I can continue to should all over myself, or accept that I may have more work cut-out for me in the year ahead. This year I am saying goodbye to my labels and rather than viewing the past year as good or bad, I will forgo such judgments. Discounting the good, neutral, or difficult moments will only lead to depressive and anxious feelings. Bringing these self-defeating emotions into the new year is no way to motivate oneself to tackle all that 2014 may bring.
What fun is a resolution if it can be achieved overnight? I do not know of any rules that state a resolution must be achievable? Now you may be thinking that this concept seems illogical. Why create a resolution that one cannot come close to reaching over the next year? However, this is the challenge I am going to pose for myself. I am spicing up my resolutions for 2014 and letting go of any self-imposed expiration dates.
I believe that the first step is to change those anxious and depressive feelings regarding our past resolutions. Instead of viewing those resolutions that were not achieved as a short-coming, think of them as a starting point for what we would like to work toward in 2014. Abandoning our demandingness for preferences leads us to the healthier emotional reactions of disappointment and concern when our plans do not pan out. We can put our analytic skills toward good use, and rather than criticize what may not have been done during the past year, determine how to make a positive change moving forward.
Happy New Year!