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  • Writer's pictureAriana M. Stadtlander

Ringing in the New Year


Picture this.


Candy-cane striped wrapping paper strewn across the living room floor; the merry sound of giggling children as they play with their shiny new toys; the adults smile as they watch their little faces light up with wonderment at each new present opened. The matriarch of the family calls from the dining room to signal that dinner is served. The smell of roasted ham, candied yams, and buttery potatoes reaches your nose and you sit down, anxiously waiting for the elderly man at the head of the table to finish carving the meat. Such joy, such feasting, takes place right before your eyes, and you feel warm with love and hope for the new year. As bellies are filled to the brim with contentment and the pie is being passed around, someone asks a question -- a question that is inevitably posed every year.


“What are your New Year’s resolutions?”


And just like that, everyone’s chiming in with their responses -- some cliché and heard all too often, others new and inspiring. Everything from weight loss to making more money, to quitting a bad habit to spending more time with family. Very little isn’t listed when it comes time to share our resolutions with each other.


After all, New Year’s resolutions have become as much tradition as Thanksgiving turkey or mistletoe at Christmas.


Fast forward to after the scrumptious dinner filled with high (oftentimes, too high) hopes for the New Year, to January 2nd, when it’s time to actually start trying to fulfill that long list of goals -- and you only have 365 days to do it. No pressure.


I used to do the New Year’s resolutions thing too. Every year I would set out with five or six (or sometimes twelve!) things that I wanted to accomplish. January would be filled with high hopes for the future and for the exponential ways I was going to better my life; and by the time December rolled back around, I would look back on the year with discouragement because I was nowhere near as ‘improved’ as I had hoped to be. After years of the same thing happening over and over again, I finally decided to give up on the New Year’s thing and try something else.


Gone are the days of impractical resolutions so difficult to achieve, that place so much pressure on me, that leave me feeling so deflated by the end of the year. Now I try to look at the bigger picture. Instead of looking at how I want to change myself in this year, I think about how I want myself to change in this life. I see all the character flaws that I want to improve and all of the personal goals I want to achieve, and rather than giving myself a timeline of 365 days to do so, I give myself a lifetime. By the time New Year’s Day rolls back around again, instead of thinking of all the goals I didn’t even come close to fulfilling, I reflect on the slight ways I came even closer to meeting the goals that I have given myself my entire life to fulfill.


Want to know what I find when I do that?

I find that I have made more head-way in giving myself a longer timeline than I ever would have by pressuring myself to achieve so much in the timeframe of a year (which always seems to fly by). I find myself more encouraged, more strengthened, and more pleased by the time December comes back around because I can see real progress -- progress that isn’t cut short just because the old year is over and the new year has come once again with its long list of new resolutions.


We have our whole lives to become the best versions of ourselves. I think people like to set short timeframes because they think it prevents them from procrastinating. For me, short timeframes add pressure that quickly turns to discouragement, and this discouragement almost always leads to me just giving up.


So, maybe our New Year’s resolution this year should be to simply work each and every year to improve ourselves in little ways. To lose that weight, to earn that money, to quit that habit, to spend that time with family. After all, we have our whole lives to become better, and sometimes, it is better to look at the bigger picture, to recognize that we are just human, we are imperfect, and we don’t always change in the blink of an eye (or in 365 days, for that matter).


I hope that for you 2019 is a year of joy, of self-discovery, of laughter, and of encouragement.





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