I hate the words “New Years Resolutions.” Hate ’em, hate ’em, hate ’em.
Why? Well, I think because they sound so committal! I mean, to resolve something connotes much more of a firm stance than I can truly muster toward any goal. “Be it resolved…” just sounds like something you’d hear on some kind of official, meaningless government document, anyways.
Not to mention the fact that the “New Years Resolution” is most widely defined as a goal you set at the beginning of the year that you break by the end of January or February. I mean, we practically write failure into the definition when we set a “resolution.”
So a few years ago, I started writing a simple document every year titled “Stuff I’d Like to Do in 200x”. In this document, I just wrote a bunch of stuff – anything that came to mind at the time – that I would like to see happen in my life. I have found this to be a very effective way to goal set. Mostly beause it puts me in the mental state to make those things happen in my life or to recieve those blessings that I think I want. Not everything happens on my list, and many things become year over year pursuits, but at least I make more progress on them than I do my one or two “new years resolutions” that are often broken before they even get started.
Growing up in southern Oklahoma, I always saw people wearing clothing from a restaurant called “Eskimo Joe’s.” It is a very memorable logo; an eskimo with a huge toothy grin on his face along with his dog. I didn’t know much about Eskimo Joe’s except that it was a restaurant and that everyone seemed to have a shirt from there.