A Resolution Worth Making

2025 is here.

In any new year, the seasonal call of winter beckons us to “go inside,” to make time for introspection. As we stand at the threshold between the old and the new, many of us review the past year and make resolutions for the year upcoming.

Resolutions obviously are about resolve. But why does my resolve so often DISsolve?

We humans love a fresh start, but we don’t necessarily sustain our fresh intentions. After many years of resolutions that fizzled, I’ve all but stopped making them, thinking, why put energy into something that I’m probably not going to do?

Recently I’ve been wondering if the problem isn’t with me, but with the resolution itself. Not that any resolution I’ve made was inherently bad, but more importantly, that it didn’t rest on deep, honest reflection.

In hindsight, I can see that my unsuccessful resolutions have been about things I thought I SHOULD do, usually in areas that are really challenging, or where I disappoint myself. More tellingly, the resolutions did not come from deep inside me, where my loves and longings reside. They were surface-level, and not truly aligned with my most strongly held values.

Mostly my New Year’s resolutions have involved “fixing” something about myself, and perhaps that prompted self-sabotage. If I try enacting the resolution from a place of feeling bad or defeated, I’m unlikely to even remember it by Valentine’s Day.

Still, I want to be someone who keeps her word to herself, and I bet you do too. And I would like to resolve to do something, and do it thoroughly and well.

So, I propose two new thoughts:

I don’t need another self improvement project: I accept myself as I am here and now!
What if my New Year’s resolution is not about what I do, but what I value?

If I am going to make a resolution, I do not want it to be yet another exercise in feeling bad. In thinking about 2025 and the difficulties it will likely bring, I need to feel self-confident and that I am living into my values in a world which seems not to share them.

I had a look at Brené Brown’s List of Values (https://brenebrown.com/resources/dare-to-lead-list-of-values/) and did the hard work of whittling the list down to my top 3:

•Freedom

•Belonging

•Learning

I asked myself the extent to which I upheld these values in 2024. Learning was a strong point; I took 3 courses and read 30 books last year. Perhaps this was the easiest value to uphold because I had so much agency in this arena.

Feeling free was a bit challenging in an election year; I would say I felt more concerned and scared about losing freedom than I felt free. And belonging for me is not just a feeling of connection, but also depends on physically being with other humans–and I haven’t done much of that since the pandemic.

As I look at my experience of 2024, there’s no feeling of shame or apology. Instead I feel curiosity and excitement in asking myself:

Given that I most value freedom, belonging, and learning, how can I generate more of it in 2025? How does this activity or decision I’m considering enrich my freedom, belonging, or learning? What deeply excites and enlivens me about freedom, belonging, and learning? What am I going to do about it, and with whom?

Now THAT sounds like a sincere resolution, one I can live into day by day, with relish.