Just because the clock strikes midnight, and the calendar turns to January 1 doesn’t mean some magical transformation happens in our lives or that we’re suddenly ready or able to make such a transformation happen for ourselves. Pretending the passage of time is somehow also automatically the turning of a page is a setup for disappointment, self-doubt, and lingering unease. Suggesting that this mirage of an annual milestone called New Year is magically the time for starting things anew and changing course in our lives explains why most of the stuff we start in January as a year-long resolution has stopped by February.
I don’t mean to sound negative. I mean to sound honest, to be realistic about growing and changing rather than merely being hopeful or delusional we will grow and change. I suspect, if you are like me and like most humans, 2024 wasn’t all peaches and cream, and that didn’t change on January 1, 2025. My friends (4) from their 30’s to their 80’s are all still dead, and I am still mourning. My family member is still fighting cancer and managing a difficult recovery. I’m still raising my children in a world that many days frightens me, and most days frightens me for them.
What I am reflecting on as I enter this new year is that it’s ok to let the New Year inspire goal setting. In fact, it’s a good, symbolic moment for it. It’s ok for a New Year to be a time of optimism and planning for something better. But, it’s also a great time to look back at all the stuff that sucked about the previous year, to evaluate the scars we earned, to see what we can control and what we can’t, and to name the stressors and anxieties we are carrying into the next year.
Knowing what past we need to let go of or what present we still need to work through is the only way we know what future we can honestly and freely run toward.
If we are resolved to work on these things first, our New Year’s resolutions will become a lot more resolute.
So, I want to offer a few atypical tips on New Year’s resolutions with the understanding that they will likely be far more meaningful than magical.
1) Talk or write or otherwise reflect on the parts of 2024 that sucked.
Name them. Accept them. Then talk or write or otherwise reflect on the parts of 2024 that were wonderful. Name them. Accept them. Neither is right or wrong. Neither can be changed. Neither is controllable at this point. Both just are. And, both are now a part of us as we head into 2025.
2) Evaluate your wounds.
Which ones are still active and open? We all hurt sometimes. It proves we love. It proves we care. It proves we are human. How can we allow those wounds to start to heal and become scars? How can we accept, as Buddha might, that our pain is what makes us human but our suffering is our choice? How can we carry pain, but not suffering into the New Year? Let’s make a resolution around that.
3) Own your scars.
These are the wounds that have healed in some way, whether by time or deliberate effort. Can we allow them to become a part of who we are, a symbol of our strength and resilience moving forward, and not merely a marker of something that hurt us in the past? Can we own them and thereby claim the power from the life or events or people that caused them? Can we define which ones we caused ourselves and define a better way? Let’s make a resolution around that.
4) Define your next-best self – wounds, scars, and all.
Plant a seed in all that newly fertilized 2024 soil. How might we be a better person in 2025? How might we be better at work? How might we be better to ourselves? How might I become the father, spouse, sibling, uncle, cousin, friend, and co-worker that I want to be? I know, for me, it starts with quieting the noise still swirling in my head from 2024. Let’s make a resolution around that.
5) Build a foundation.
With this foundation of honest, practical resolutions starting where we really are with life, with ourselves, with our relationships, with work, let’s define a goal that excites and stretches us, that defies any negatives and triggers our spirit, that gives us energy, that offers us something to run toward as we work on and through our other resolutions.
May we all be resolved to find peace and love and hope in the New Year knowing that it starts within us.