January has just started! Well today’s WorthWorkin4Wednesday blog post doesn’t talk about New Year resolutions and goals, but something quite the opposite that is, the anti-new year resolution approach (any why it can work for you)!

Every New Year starts the same way. We have made a whole bunch of resolutions, a longish to-do list, with perfect on-the-paper, overzealous and ambitious New Year resolutions.

However, the reality starts sinking in and we realize within the 1^st quarter that we are seriously lagging behind, struggling to achieve our goals. Subsequently, our precious and ambitious New Year resolutions start falling like deck of dominoes.

 Let’s admit it: New Year resolutions are created more out of the pressure of a convention rather than deep-set motivation and intuitiveness. ‘What are your New Year Resolutions?’ This is a question we commonly ask from one another. So we feel that we too need to have a bunch of them, least others think that we are the laidback, unambitious kind.

But when New Year resolutions and goals fail, they fail miserably. And whenever they do, you feel utterly miserable.

You feel like a failure! You rue as to why you can’t do more, be more, change fast enough!

But hey, you aren’t alone! Almost everyone sets New Year Resolutions but very few manage to keep them. A few manage to achieve most of their goals.

Let’s not be too hard on ourselves! We can’t manage to keep our resolutions because we have been busy surviving! With the world plunging in chaos all around us, it is not an easy feat to survive and thrive.

Similarly, many of us have families and thus have been balancing the conflicting demands of parallel roles, dealing with competing priorities. It’s not easy! If you have been able to keep your family healthy, happy and safe, keep your familial structure intact, then it’s also an accomplishment worth celebrating.

Likewise, some of us have been busy taking care of our mental health, which again is an accomplishment far bigger than any resolution and goal set and achieved.

Above all, if you have been able to:  

• keep yourself out of the hospital
• have the means to earn
• have a warm bed and a roof on your head
• have some money set aside for rainy days
• have been able to put square meals on the table this year

….then you have been immensely blessed.

You have been able to achieve far more than most of us. Just look around you! A war and violence torn world getting darker, complex and polarized every day is a reminder of not to detach ourselves from the reality, the broader vision of life itself!  

And sometimes, life and the effort of living your life get in the way of the best of our intentions and resolutions!

This was me this year and many I know.

You might have done better, or worst.

As I grow old, I realize that….

Resolution is more than the resolve to ‘do bigger things’, commit to larger-than-life goals, keep telling ourselves to do better and better and then subsequently beating ourselves down after failing to achieve these goals.

It’s not wise to create all this pressure for yourself. All the stress and the guilt in trying to become the perfect version of ourselves create pressure, disappointments, failure.

What we can do instead is to try being a better version of ourselves every day, working our way through change, personal growth.

A better version enables us to:  

• Accept our flaws with grace and compassion
• Forgo the need to judge ourselves and others for our failings
• Ditch the pressure to be perfect, always  
• Cultivate small positive habits that help us transform
• Create a personalized system that works for us
• Humanize our efforts

We can’t transform overnight, have an awakening in the last quarter of the year and try to rush through transformation overnight.  It has to be done gradually and patiently, slowly but more mindfully.

To sum up…No matter what 2024 brings us, the desire to live a more authentic, gentler, intuitive life is better than having a bunch of idealistic resolutions. It is an aim to put yourself on the long and slow road of personal transformation, without pressure and guilt.