There are many rituals related to the beginning of a New Year, including, of course, making resolutions. In fact, it seems that everybody needs to share his or her advice about how to make good resolutions. This year, I received a press release from a city north of Denver with such an advice.
The press release said the resolutions and goals for the New Year should be clear, measurable, and reachable within a given time. In addition, according to the same source, to avoid future disappointments those resolutions should be simple and easily achievable.
To clarify its point, the same release offers an example of how simple the personal goals for 2012 should be: save $1 per week, because anything higher than that could be difficult to achieve.
I know part of the motivation to make resolutions at the beginning of the year is to know those goals are realistic and achievable. For example, the only way for me to lose 50 pounds in a short time is to forget where I put the large bag of potatoes I bought at the supermarket.
The press release convinced me to make resolution so simple that you can reach them with little effort and with almost no risk to your self-esteem. For 2012, I have decided to make the following resolutions. Based on my experience in previous years, I will easily achieve all my goals:
Gain weight
Watch more television
Spend less time with my family and friends
Spend more time in front of my computer
Spend more money without knowing where that money is going
Work more hours for less payment
Forget about health prevention activities
Neglect my spiritual life
Keep dreaming without doing anything for those dreams to become a reality
Contribute very little and almost nothing to charities
Be a volunteer as few times as possible, and only under pressure and to be seen
I truly believe I will be able to do all those things and many more, including saving $50 in 2012 ($50, and not $52, because I am planning a two-week vacation.)
I just realized that those resolutions are the same ones I had last yearsand they are very similar to the resolutions of my friends and acquaintances. Those resolutions are very easy to achieve and, therefore, they are not going to harm my self-esteem. There is no chance I will break those resolutions.
I have a couple of questions: Whatever happened to that idea of establishing goals for a year, or a decade, or a lifetime, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” as President Kennedy said in Houston in 1962?
Are we so uncommitted to improve our own life that even from the government (in this case, a municipality) we are invited to make no serious efforts to better our future?
Our resolution for 2012 and for every day should be to challenge ourselves to go beyond our own limits. That is hard, and that is why we should do it.