The Ultimate New Year’s Resolution

It’s almost New Year’s Eve, and my list of potential resolutions for the New Year is long, almost infinite.  There is so much I want to improve in myself.

But do you remember your resolutions from one short year ago?  If you do, did you follow them for more than a few weeks? Did they make you a better person now than you were on January 1, 2015?

These are rhetorical questions: no answers are expected.

But for this New Year I will limit my New Year’s resolution to one. It will be simple to remember, and much easier to act on than the three or four I normally make that aren’t even very original: lose weight, express more kindness, and simplify my life.

If those multiple resolutions were so effective, why do I have to repeat them year after year?  Why do I continue to be disappointed by my failure to improve?  Courting failure is not a good reason to make resolutions.  This January 1st, and for the full year of 2016, I want to feel good about myself.

So this December I’m not going to soul search to discover my flaws then vow to overcome them.  I’m not going to suffer the disappointment of finding on January 1, 2017 that, as usual, I have either forgotten my resolutions entirely or failed to live up to them.

Two days from now I will make my single New Year’s resolution.  I’m going to write it down, and I invite you to join me in making a similar New Year’s resolution for yourself.  Here’s mine:

I will love and care for myself.

Happy New Year!

Alan