RESOLUTION NOW

December 12th, 2018

As the last month of the year wanes into it’s halfway point, many people are feeling the stress that seems to mount to a sort of crescendo.  Particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, people are eating too much, getting sick and because of this vicious cycle of pressure, many look forward to the new year as a way to restart.  Hence New Year’s Resolutions. 

People seem to think that a new year means suddenly having access to a new self.  But people do not change by the tick of a clock, nor the rising of the sun on a particular day.  Change is slow, and when attempting to initiate any sort of change, the going is tough and rarely shows any results.  Hence why so many New Year’s Resolutions fall to the wayside and fail to ever gain the habitual momentum that is needed for a change in the brain to gain a real structural hold and somewhat secure the new behavior.

January first is an entirely arbitrary day. We would be better to think of every day as January first since we are only ever granted access to the present moment.  The past ceases to exist as fast as the present develops, which is also to say that the past never starts to exist.  So too with the future.

But, this does not diminish the utility of planning.  There are 18 days left before that big imaginary switch, and that’s enough time to push through the hardest two weeks of instituting a new habit.

If you start right now, by the time New Year’s Resolutions rolls around, you’ll already have a change with momentum. 

Simply put, when it comes to things that we can take action on right now, waiting for the future is always a mistake.