I realize all the cool kid eschew New Year’s resolutions, with a given value for ‘cool kids’ being my group of friends plus assorted publications and other ‘online influencers’, but I digress. I get it. We have all been making New Year’s resolutions since we were kids and failing to attain the high bar we set for ourselves at the start of the year.
This was most vividly proven true for me the year I decided I wanted to become Indiana Jones but failed to even leave the house on a grand adventure, much less go Nazi hunting and save irreplaceable cultural artifacts. Of course I was nine years old, but still, the lesson has stuck.
And yet.
We all get suckered into New Year’s resolutions one way or another, even if we jokingly resolve the spend our next year doing exactly what we did this past year! It’s a cultural thing, and pretty much inescapable.
In that spirit, though, last year I decided not to make specific New Year’s resolutions – not word count goals, not projects completed, not a diet or exercise plan, or any other kind of major life-goal commitment.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “but KimBoo! You did actually make some important life changes at the start of January, 2018!” And you are right, I totally did. But they were not resolutions, because my not-a-resolution was simply this question and nothing more:
What difference can a year make?
Everything I went into at the start of 2018 I approached with that idea, whether it was a diet change or a commitment to therapy. (Hint: it was both, plus more.)
Life can change not on a dime but on the percentage point of a penny. So I knew that a year can make a profound difference, if I committed to the experiment rather than the goal.
The changes were profound, and long-lasting. What changed in that year? Me.
I did change my diet and my exercise routine, so now I’m not hungry all the time or ruled by cravings and compulsions. I get up early every morning to dance for an hour because I want to, because if I don’t I will spend the day sad that I didn’t get to dance to my YouTube “happy dancy” playlist. I started a business, which some of you know about, as a writing coach. That’s less about sharing my deep knowledge of the technique of writing, which I don’t even have, than it is about finding a way to encourage people who want to write to sit down and write (if you have tried to write, whether you are a professional writer or an amateur, then you know exactly what I’m talking about).
I’m also mapping out a writing and publishing schedule for the books I want to write, something I have avoided for a long time more out of the fear of failure than irresponsibility. (I find perfectionism is a much more powerful tool for procrastination than any innate laziness.)
I made some major breakthroughs in therapy, and if I had to sum it all up in one phrase, concerning my relationships with my parents and what I went through as a child all the way through adulthood and terrible jobs I’ve had, and other traumatic events I’d rather not get into here, I would put it thusly: it wasn’t about me.
That has been incredibly liberating. I don’t have to figure out why certain people made me feel the way they did, because the way I felt about it had nothing to do with why they were behaving that way. It wasn’t about me, it wasn’t my fault, and I did the best I could in the circumstances. I am free.
And finally, late in the year, after reading way too much new age woo woo fluff, I realized that there is an essential truth to both what those spiritualist practitioners were saying and what neurological science is beginning to tell us, which that is we do have a lot of control over our reality.
What I mean by that is not that I have the power to change the weather or to heal the sick and wounded, but that I have the power to change my brain. I can purposefully change it for the better, just by trying. For some people that effort includes meds, but however it’s done it can be done. The point being is that I realized my attitude towards money was broken, and based on lessons I learned very literally 40 years ago. I learned this year that the only way to change how I think about something is to consciously and continually change how I think about it — it sounds like an oxymoron but it is true. So now I don’t claim that I’m bad with money like I used to say all the time, I announce that I’m a very good money manager. I have a budget, and if I don’t stick to it sometimes, that’s not because I am quote terrible with money but because I’m human, and shit happens. Do I need to spend less money on going out to dinner? Absolutely! And now I know that. I’ve also acknowledged that if there is one overarching goal for the year ahead of me, it’s to payoff my student loans.
Do you see those paragraphs up there? That is a lot of stuff. And, honestly, it doesn’t capture the amount of effort I put into EMDR therapy or the amount of effort I put into finishing my books and working on my publishing career, or the amount of effort I put into changing my brain.
With that in mind, my not-a-resolution for 2019 remains unchanged from 2018. What I accomplish will be based on the goals I have in my head, things that are important to me that I want to do, but it all rests on this one simple question that I asked myself every single damn morning all year long:
What difference can be year make?
So happy New Year’s the all! I hope your year is filled positive change, glad tidings, hard work, and happiness!