Checking In on Your New Year’s Resolutions — Which Ones Have You Kept?

If you’re among the few, brave souls who began 2024 with a written list of things you planned, insisted, prayed, and determined to do this year—without ceasing—then congratulations for even having made a list in the first place! Not everyone has things they want to change but the occasion of writing a new year on paper offers an instant chance to redirect your priorities and set new goals for the future.

Goals without work and sacrifice are merely words. With hard work, time, patience, and dedication you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. And yet, you might be assessing your progress so far. As we get close to Valentine’s Day, we are reminded that we are about to reach those “first six weeks of the report card” on how we are doing this year compared to last. How is your resolution card working out?

Let’s see what your first resolution was—a good first guess is that you were going to give up something that you believed was a bad habit. Is it food-related? Did you resolve to give up sweets or snack treats for a fixed period of time? Was it related to weight loss?

Were you going to hit the gym every day? A renewed commitment to being your best self? So, how is it going? Has it been easy to give up the thing you enjoyed because it was not helping you be better? Was it hard to find a way to make time for the gym three times each week? Were you going to take walks in the neighborhood but the cold and the rain and the inevitable weather problems making it impossible to be outside for exercise?

As you start grading yourself on your goals for the new year, be honest and truthful with yourself while grading. And be kind. Perhaps you set too rigid a structure for “no” this or more of “that” in your time. These days virtually every hour of our day belongs to work, to family, to church, or to home. Doesn’t leave much time for yourself after you book yourself for the things you are already expected to do.

Were you going to clean out that pesky messy closet? Have you made any progress? One friend says they refuse to buy any new clothing item until they bag up two items to donate to their favorite charity. That’s a good policy. Not hard to follow.

Do you find stacks of paper still on your dining table in a “to be filed” category? You can start to help yourself if you break the stack of papers that you see as overwhelming into groups marked “urgent, handle now” and “no rush, you can look at them in a week or two” and “read and discard.” Now, does the stack look less daunting? That’s the best way to handle any problem, breaking it down into little pieces.

If you have not measured up to everything you promised yourself you’d do differently in 2024, before you get down on yourself, realize that to even think about making changes in your life is a great first step! Now, no one is perfect and the first time you try a new behavior you may not succeed. Like playing the piano, or succeeding in sports, or learning to paint with watercolors, the key is practice, practice, practice. So are resolutions. They are just a series of promises you make to yourself.

In life, you don’t want to let others down when you promise them something. If you tell your child you’re going to be at their school play performance, you want to be there. That’s not optional. So, if you promise yourself to go to the doctor to check out something that has been bothering you, don’t delay. Call and get an appointment and make yourself a priority, just as you would your best friend. In fact, be your own best friend and take care of yourself first so there is a strong, healthy you to take care of others.

If you’ve been sad and isolated during bad weather and find yourself making excuses not to get outside in the good weather, it’s time to realize that we all can fall into habits of what is easier, what is simpler to do when we have choices. It’s not hard to make a change. It can be a challenge, though, to make that same change over and over enough to where it is a fixed new behavior. But we learn.

Next step to correcting slipping from achieving your goals is to get up, dust yourself off, and try again. Don’t waste time on the failure you leave behind you. Every day is a clean slate, a tabula rasa, as they say. Celebrate one success at a time. Enjoy positive self-talk and encourage yourself to find time to focus on improving the things you want to have happen. Pronouncing yourself a success helps you code into your mind that you are a success.

Make yourself accountable to your spouse or best friend. Use the buddy system when you want to change something or start a positive new behavior. It helps to have someone else encouraging you as you go along.

Set weekly times to see how you did that previous week in working toward your goals. Make a detailed list of all the changes and improvements you want to make. Then order the list in terms of what has to be done first, second, and third before those goals are achieved. There’s power each time you make a check mark on the list.

With a weekly check-in session, between now and the next six weeks you have six different opportunities to win, change, improve, correct, clean, organize, lose, and to start being kinder to yourself to celebrate your incremental successes along the way. Positive self-talk is key at every point along the way. Soon you will see a new you, a new home environment, and there is beauty in order. Good luck and here’s to wishing you a Happy New Year one more time! You’ve got this!

Cody D. Jones ‘02

Owner & Community Member