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New Year’s Didn’t Used to Be About Losing Weight
“Lose weight” seems to top the most common New Year’s Resolution list, which isn’t a bad thing. In fact, numerous studies have shown that making a New Year’s Resolution really does increase your odds of reaching your goal. So go for it. But your life isn’t just about your weight, and your goals for the year should reflect the whole you – not just the part you’d like to get rid of.
An Atlantic Journal article last December uncovered New Year’s postcards from the early 1900s – before fast food chains and sedentary lifestyles made their impact. I think this little poem on one of those cards is glorious:
“For Every Morning or the New Year
I will this day try to live a simple, sincere, and serene life, repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity and self-seeking; cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence; exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust and a child-like trust in God.”
Now that is what I call a New Year’s Resolution.
Resolutions are a wonderful way to write down and visualize a crystal clear image of what you want for yourself. So be specific. Be thoughtful. Write not only what you’d like to accomplish but also why it’s important to you. Put your resolutions in a place where you can see them, and say them, every day (because there is power in words). And, finally, remember the spiritual component to all this. Achieving your life’s vision isn’t something to be left up to Jenny Craig or Atkins – it’s a mission between you and God. Bring your creator in and work on your spiritual relationship as much as your body, and I know you will see your resolutions succeed.