I don’t make New Year’s resolutions and haven’t for years.  I think we all know how long we only eat healthy foods or exercise for an hour a day no matter what, right?  We don’t get annoyed at the kids for a few days until the newness of their toys wears off and we are really ready for school to start again, and keeping the house spotless while we find more personal time and clean out all our closets every month might last a month if we try hard.

Well, perhaps your resolve lasts longer than mine, but I heard somewhere that around 52 percent of people make resolutions and perhaps 12 percent consistently follow through with them over the year.  I believe the statistics for men sticking with resolutions were a bit higher than women, but the point is they don’t often last long and usually end with us sighing and feeling as if we didn’t make it happen yet again.  Since a new year does seem to be a natural starting point for changes, what might work then instead of making resolutions?

We can turn to the internet for help and find many guides for making resolutions work, and we can find useful suggestions that might raise our odds of success.  The nagging thought I had while researching this was that if the usual suggestions of making lists and keeping resolutions attainable worked really well, shouldn’t our success rates skyrocket to 80 percent or at least something more impressive than 12 percent?  Since I have the usual list of changes I want to make this year I decided to try a different approach that I thought might bring better results.  We all want to have a wonderful year and stretch our success into the rest of the decade, so here is what I propose.

The first concept that throws me is “resolution”.  I didn’t want to resolve to do this or that starting on January first or any other day.  The word itself makes me think of pushing away plates of cookies, sweating on a machine for hours, and household chores, among other things I could “resolve” to do.  One favorite cookie or bad day on the machine and that resolve will be out of here, so I am not resolving to do anything.  What I am doing instead is visualizing what I want this year of my life to look and feel like and continuing to visualize it each day.  I didn’t start at a magical midnight moment and resolve to give up everything I “shouldn’t” do, but I realized recently that when a few years ago I lost 130 pounds and was running races I didn’t do it by “resolving” anything.  I visualized what I wanted my life to be like and asked myself if this late night snack fit into the picture I wanted for my life.  I looked at that image a lot and I didn’t resolve with willpower or punish myself if I did something that didn’t feel like the life I want for myself and my kids, but I thought of it as a day in a long life.  That moment might not fit the picture, but it doesn’t mean my “resolve” is broken or my year is ruined.  I didn’t start on a magical date or make a list of resolutions, but instead I did a few simple things to get started.

I wrote a paragraph that I can look at often that paints an image of the life I want and what I would like the year to be like and I thought about what I have been doing that is part of the picture.  I basked in the glow of knowing I am on the right path and patted myself on the back for what I have done to make the year the best yet, and then I thought about what I am doing that holds me back from having the life I want.  When the snack attack comes on I think of my picture and paragraph, the feelings I want to surround myself with, the energy I want to feel inside myself, and then I choose.  I won’t always make perfect choices, but I will be going in the right direction and not beating myself up over resolutions instead of consciously choosing how my life feels.  I didn’t use a strict diet since those don’t work, but instead I just made small lifestyle changes that added up to a happier life in general.  So far I feel at peace with this approach and have less stress, and I invite you to join me in my lack of resolutions and abundance of choices.  Take a moment to visualize what you want your life to look and feel like and enjoy the picture often as you move toward the life you want.  Enjoy the journey instead of waiting for a particular date to begin your life, and here’s to a wonderful decade for us all!