It’s New Year’s Day, the time when many of us make resolutions for the coming year (or sometimes for the rest of our lives). I used to be part of the resolution bandwagon. Every year, I would think about and write down my resolutions, all of the ways that I wanted to better myself and all of the things that I wanted to work harder at. It was easy to come up with resolutions, and it was easy for me to keep them.
Recently, I have determined that, like most things in the world, resolutions don’t work for everyone. And they don’t work for me. But not for the reason that you might think. Unlike other people who have abandoned resolutions, my reason for doing so is not that I end up breaking the resolutions, anyway, so why bother?
In fact, the reason that resolutions don’t work for me is that I am too good at resolving and following through. And being too good at this is hazardous for my sense of balance in my life and my mental and emotional well being.
I am a very disciplined person who spends a lot of her time (too much of it, frankly) trying. Putting effort into things. Much of my life has been a series of instances or periods of time when I have grappled with learning to let go. Being a “try-er” by nature, I have had to learn repeatedly that in nearly every case, I am better off when I let go rather than try. The trying part comes naturally – I will try when trying is appropriate (which is much less often than I think it is). What is much more challenging for me is letting go when letting go is appropriate.
So many of the ways that I spend my time, from singing to playing the piano to swinging a golf club to teaching to leading discussions to running meetings to managing people to directing programs to social interactions to staying healthy to relaxing to just living in this world consist of a delicate balance of trying and letting go.
Resolutions are not about letting go (I guess they can be if one resolves to let go, but that feels like an oxymoronic resolution). They are about trying – the determination to do something differently, to stop doing something, or to start doing something, and then they are about following through towards meeting a goal. I need less of this way of thinking and being in my life, not more.
So I refuse to resolve this year. I am letting go of resolutions.
