By CHARLENE PAUL
Moapa Valley Progress
I always look forward to the new year for one major reason. It isn’t the resolutions I will write and set aside. It isn’t the whole “new year/new you thing.” It isn’t getting used to writing a new number at the end of the date. Nope. It isn’t any of those things.
I look forward to the new year so I can write in my new planner and set up my new calendar. Something about flipping open the first few pages of a pristine planner and touching pen to paper almost makes me giddy.
The new year is the perfect time for change. You know the drill: out with the old, in with the new. Making drastic changes in the middle of the year isn’t the same as deciding on a fresh start with a blank planner and calendar.
As I contemplated the changes this new year would bring, I wondered about what needed changing but continually remained the same: things like paying off debt, getting back into shape, starting a new job, revamping a business, remodeling the bathroom, learning a new craft or hobby, and a slew of other stuff I never seem to get around to, although I have the best of intentions.
Years ago, as I entered yet another new year with the same goal of getting back into shape top on my list, I moaned to a dear friend that I feared I would have to make the same resolution the following year because that goal never seemed to get off the paper on which it was written. I wanted her to soothe my nerves and tell me it was okay. I wanted her to tell me she understood. I wanted sympathy for my shortcomings.
“You know the definition of insanity, right?” she asked. I shook my head.
“It’s doing the same thing the same way with the same amount of effort and expecting the outcome to be somehow different than it has always been,” she said.
So much for soothed nerves, understanding, and sympathy.
I argued that her definition didn’t have anything to do with my fitness goals going belly-up year after year. There was the time issue, the food preparation issue, the grandkids, the moon-never-getting-to-the-Seventh-House-so-Jupiter-could-align-with-Mars issue. She sat patiently and said not a word until I ran out of excuses.
“The definition of insanity,” she finally said again.
I have thought about that as my planners contain the same goals year after year. It is complete and total insanity to expect change if I refuse to change myself and my habits. But change is frustrating, confusing, and hard. And besides, if I do make the necessary changes and my situation actually changes, what will I have to complain about? What will I do with my hard and fast excuses? What if I make changes and things still don’t work out as planned?
The answer to the first question is that there will always be something to complain about. Think of how exhilarating it will be to complain about something new.
Toss them out is the answer to the second question. Once changes occur, there is no need to hold on to old, tired, worn-out excuses. Let them go.
If everything doesn’t go as planned, consider it a success anyway. Figuring out what won’t work is often as important as figuring out what will. Thomas Edison put it this way, “I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Human beings aren’t hardwired to love change. We fight it. We hide from it. We shun it. We long for security, even if that security is a rut. We don’t love the rut, but it is familiar and staying there requires no effort.
This year, I decided I won’t begin with the lose-weight-get-back-into-shape resolution followed by a long list of more resolutions. This year will be different. This year, I have one resolution. That’s right, one.
This year I resolve to embrace change and not fear failure. By whittling my resolution list down to this one thing, everything else in my life will fall into place or fall away. Either way, change will happen.
I admit to being a little nervous, but I look forward to diving, headfirst, into 2019. I am excited to see where this resolution takes me. The resolution page in my new planner looks a little sparse, and yet, this is the most all-encompassing of resolutions I have ever made.
I wish each and every one of you and your families the Happiest of New Years. I pray for the strength and courage each of us requires to continue pressing forward.
Charlene Paul and her husband Ken raised their family in Moapa Valley. She loves reading, writing, baking, crochet, and talking. She is the owner of Look on the WRITE Side, a freelance writing and proofreading company and can be contacted at lookonthewriteside@gmail.com.
