Keeping New Year's Resolutions (Or Not)

A lot of people pooh-pooh New Year's resolutions. They are, many say, ridiculous and meaningless and ultimately do nothing but shine a spotlight on all the failures in your life. Perhaps. That's definitely one way to look at it.

I usually don't make a big deal of making resolutions. That's because I usually don't keep them. I mean, here we are, the third week of January, and already I've blown one of my New Year's resolutions. Okay, if I'm really honest, I haven't kept any of them perfectly.

That said, I have done fairly well with the food-related resolutions. The resolution I have come closest to keeping: cutting out high fructose corn syrup. I've become acutely aware of anything that might contain HFCS. I read all labels and scrupulously avoid purchasing those items. I've also cut back drastically on the amount of white starches I eat. Cut back, but not completely cut out. I allow one day a week in which I can eat white starches. Unfortunately, this weekend kind of turned into a bit of a potato-fest. But now I'm back on the wagon.

And that brings us to my third and final resolution, the one that actually concerns you. I promised myself when I started this blog that I would post something at least once a week. The first week, I did great. I posted not only once, but twice! This blogging stuff is a breeze!

Then I forgot to post anything last week. I thought about throwing myself on your mercy, of begging and pleading for forgiveness. I worried that you would think I was a failure, a complete bum. One empty promise after another. But then I realized: you've got better things to do with your life than to sweat over my not getting another entry posted to my blog. I'm much more concerned about it than you will ever be.

And that's when it hit me: it's easy to put yourself on the rack for dropping the ball on NY resolutions. But you really shouldn't be very hard on yourself. After all, a resolution is a promise to try to do better. That's really the most important part about making resolutions: resolving to improve, to try harder, to move toward a goal. It's a little way of reminding ourselves that we aren't perfect--that nobody is--but that we are going to try our darnedest to do better in the future. 

Resolutions help us move toward the change we want to see in our lives. It's not a disaster if you fail to live up to that resolution one day. It's a reminder of all the other days you did what you said you would. And the great thing about beginning the changes with the new year is that you have an easy way to measure your progress: I've made it eight days without a cigarette. I've lost 13 pounds in four months. I've written on my blog every week for six weeks.

Change is a process, and as long as we're moving toward positive change, that's a good thing.