Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions? A Vision’s Even Better

What better resolution could there be entering a New Year than simply to have a better one?

Whether it’s a health goal or better financial security or the peace of spiritual success (or something else), we all desire to have life better than we’ve had it. Yet, it doesn’t always work that way. This is why many people have trepidations about the concept of ‘beginning over’.

Some people choose not to begin over; they’re resistant to the whole idea of New Year. It doesn’t matter how people think. Everyone wants a happy life (however people individually define it).

The New Year’s Resolution for those who don’t make them is a special one; it clinches the field as far as goal-setting goes, simply because it defeats the need to even set a goal. This Resolution is about choosing a vision for life. This is a broad direction to head in. It’s a consuming focus.

Sample Visions

Here’s how a personal vision might look:

C Rather than pick something to ‘give up,’ or ‘take up’ something new, I want to live smart one moment at a time. For me, that is ... ... ...

C What makes me happiest is ... ... ... so I’m going to do more of that from now on just because I can.

C You know, I’m sick of having regrets about family, so I’m just going to be more gracious and more forgiving, and a little more generous with my time.

C I can’t wait until I look into the mirror and like – no, love – what I see! If I want something bad enough I can achieve it.

C I see people all around me getting degrees and diplomas. I see that for myself within five years. One day I’ll be doing ... ... ... and helping people. That’s my dream life.

C Volunteering is something I’ve been promising myself for years. I’m going to start actively exploring it. A few years from now I’ll look back and thank God because of the people I’ve met and worked with, and the things I’ve done.

C From now on I’m backing off on the workload I’ve been under. I’m stressing less from now on.

Overall Benefits

It’s important that your vision is written in your words that have special meaning for you. This sort of idea trumps those with detailed and specific ideas on what to do or not do. That’s because a vision for something different is worlds bigger than the detail found in the typical New Year’s Resolution.

The idea here has been to think bigger on an overall life perspective. And perhaps the most significant benefit is we don’t limit ourselves to one year or to one failure.

Vision is about the whole of our lives, and so what if we fail here and there. It’s how we get back up that counts most. It’s what we achieve over our lifetime that makes the difference in the final analysis.

The hare might be to the New Year’s Resolution what the tortoise is to the vision; sure, soon we’ll have to take the plunge, but the New Year is not just about another year, it’s about the next step toward the rest of our lives.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.