We’re gathering with friends to ring in the New Year, and with every person I corner into a conversation I bring up the topic of New Year’s Resolutions. You can learn a lot about someone when you ask if they have resolutions.
I hear some of the standard popular resolutions: getting more fit, being more mindful and grateful, helping others, spending more time with family, etc. A few of us wanted nothing to do with New Year’s Resolutions, which is how I normally answer when the question gets turned back on me.
I typically avoid making New Year’s Resolutions—there are simply too many choices in my case. And then for many of us, there is the inevitable self-loathing, guilt, and shame when a resolution isn’t kept. And most resolutions do fail because most are focused on self-sacrifice and self-improvement, and that stuff is really hard. If those goals were easy to achieve, we wouldn’t need to make resolutions in the first place—we would just change.
But while asking my friends about New Year’s Resolutions, I also learned that Resolutions are out. Intentions are in. We’re no longer setting resolutions, we’re forming intentions. There’s a difference.
Resolution implies determination and firmness of purpose. Acting resolutely. It sounds prescriptive and difficult. Intention is a softer, more manageable version of resolution. You plan to do better, but you’re not held accountable to the same degree. With a resolution, you’re firmly planting a stake in the ground. With an intention, you’re still in the conceptual stages of planting the stake. There’s room to change your mind.
I like the idea of intentions over resolutions. So when I got asked, I made a last-second reach for an answer and I came up with something—not a resolution, not even an intention—just a concept I want to be more aware of: honoring myself more. Naturally, I chose something self-referential.
What I mean by honoring myself is being more forgiving, accepting, and appreciative of my past and present self. I intend to start talking back to the dark and self-critical narrative I can be prone to—you have don’t enough, you aren’t good enough, you screwed this up, you made a mess of that—and replacing that inward negative barrage with “you’re doing the best you can.”
I have a friend who tells me he keeps having to remind himself: “I am enough.” I should do that as well. But it ain’t easy. I was groomed to believe I should always be striving and achieving, I should be smashing failure in the face, and if I wasn’t performing in that manner, then I was falling short. I think a lot of us battle that. But enough!
It’s time I honor myself a bit more—I don’t have that much time left! And while I’m at it, I’ll also try to honor others more: my family, my friends, the person I meet on the street, the people I volunteer to help—and this too would be a way of honoring the person I am.
I could help make this a better year for myself and others. It’s within the realm of possibility. Let’s call it my intention. What’s yours?
