I'm finding myself having trouble with new years resolutions this year. I've always liked new years, and making resolutions. I love the idea of sweeping away old habits and improving oneself by developing new ones. I love the introspection and self examination making goals for the new year can bring. I love looking forward to to the possibilities and opportunities of a new year. This year, I'm having trouble, though.
One question I'm struggling with is what manner is best for making new years resolutions. I've traditionally followed the pattern of building one resolution in four areas of life: social, physical, spiritual, and intellectual/professional. Reading Baumeister and Tierney's Willpower I began to question this strategy. They suggest that one should limit themselves to only one new years resolution, as having several causes them to distract from one another.
This doesn't seem unreasonable, and as I'm looking at things I want to do this year they all seem to roughly fit under a sort of unifying umbrella. I've been thinking about creating a resolution this year that's more of a mission or values statement and peppering a few specific goals under that. I'm not that interested in having a non-specific focus, though, and prefer to focus on the quantifiable and observable to something I can convince myself is motivating or working without having anything to look at to support or refute those assertions.
I'm also wondering if this is a good year for resolutions at all. Much of this year will be just transitioning through larger changes in life that fit in to broader goals and plans of mine and my family. I'll be starting my new job, finishing my associates degree and certifying as an MLT. All of these plans are probably what I'll really be focusing on, and don't really require any new goals or resolutions for 2016 to progress. So to all of my friends, should I make resolutions this year? If so, how?
Showing posts with label New Years. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Years. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Monday, December 31, 2012
Ring Out Wild Bells!
Tennyson wrote a great little new year's poem titled Ring Out, Wild Bells. It's a great celebration of the New Year, though it originally seems to have been written as an elegy, and is recited yearly in Sweden for over ten years. It's been put to music and I for one enjoy the tune. I can't get to a new year without thinking of Ring Out, Wild bells, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
I feel like the poem creates a certain sense of spaciousness. Calls "across the snow" to the "wild sky" with bells ringing out brings to our minds visions of vast expanses laid before us. This is a nice feeling to have toward the new year. Thinking of the next 365 days as full of promise and possibility, ready for us to go forth and conquer them.
There's also a sense of release. We're told the year is dying, and to let him die. The bells are called forth to ring away sorrows, vices, and strifes. I can't quite place when it started, but I've been thinking a lot about the idea of impermanence, the acceptance that things don't last forever. I think many of us would increase our happiness is we learned to be more comfortable with the idea that nothing lasts forever. We could also really help to strengthen the values and character in our society, understanding that many things are not innate, not just normal, and if we want something to endure we need to take steps to preserve it.
Leaving behind the lesser parts of ourselves and pushing forth toward a tomorrow with a better us in it. Tennyson's poem inspires to that. My greatest hope most of the time around the new year is that we maintain our desire to better ourselves and the world around us for than the month or two surrounding the celebration, but even if only for a week a two may this great poem inspire you to
I feel like the poem creates a certain sense of spaciousness. Calls "across the snow" to the "wild sky" with bells ringing out brings to our minds visions of vast expanses laid before us. This is a nice feeling to have toward the new year. Thinking of the next 365 days as full of promise and possibility, ready for us to go forth and conquer them.
There's also a sense of release. We're told the year is dying, and to let him die. The bells are called forth to ring away sorrows, vices, and strifes. I can't quite place when it started, but I've been thinking a lot about the idea of impermanence, the acceptance that things don't last forever. I think many of us would increase our happiness is we learned to be more comfortable with the idea that nothing lasts forever. We could also really help to strengthen the values and character in our society, understanding that many things are not innate, not just normal, and if we want something to endure we need to take steps to preserve it.
Leaving behind the lesser parts of ourselves and pushing forth toward a tomorrow with a better us in it. Tennyson's poem inspires to that. My greatest hope most of the time around the new year is that we maintain our desire to better ourselves and the world around us for than the month or two surrounding the celebration, but even if only for a week a two may this great poem inspire you to
Happy New Year, everyone!
Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Journey of a Thousand Miles...
...begins with a single step, as the proverb goes. This is true, but it's the time of year where you may be noticing something else. Two weeks ago you may have resolved to do something important over the course of this year. It may have been something big, a journey of a thousand miles per se. Hopefully you took the first step toward that around the same time, but now is the time when something starts to break your stride. That step taken oh so enthusiastically two weeks is taken less frequently. Maybe it's been replaced with something else. Maybe you just don't feel like you have the energy to keep taking it over and over anymore, but that's my point here. OK, metaphor aside I'll state my point clearly. Great things come from small and simple ones, but it's by a continual repetition of them.
Taking the perennial example of New Years resolutions, losing weight, we'll clearly get the picture. My mom talks about the "fake exercisers" at the beginning of each year. Those people who invade her Gym every January. She has nothing against people exercising, rather she's annoyed knowing her spot in the kickboxing class she loyally attends will be taken by someone who'll disappear after six weeks (to be generous). Their thousand mile journey is certainly a worth taking, but they don't actually take it. They take the first step, sure, but quit after a few hundred.
Since I am a mathematician, let's look at how many steps are in a thousand miles. 1,000 miles is 1,609 km. I am a tall guy with long legs and feel OK saying my stride is probably around one meter. Thus I would have to take one million six hundred and nine thousand steps. Realizing this it seems staggering, impossible. That first step is essentially meaningless. However, if I am diligent in taking steps, if I take one step every five seconds, let's say. I can walk almost four journeys of thousand miles over one year. Taking one step every fifteen seconds I can still walk a thousand miles over the course of a year and have a little bit of time left over to, I don't know, eat and sleep.
In summary, to reach a goal-to journey a thousand miles-one must be persistent. Consistency is far more important than enthusiasm. While the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, it's only finished by the willingness and discipline to keep taking steps.
Taking the perennial example of New Years resolutions, losing weight, we'll clearly get the picture. My mom talks about the "fake exercisers" at the beginning of each year. Those people who invade her Gym every January. She has nothing against people exercising, rather she's annoyed knowing her spot in the kickboxing class she loyally attends will be taken by someone who'll disappear after six weeks (to be generous). Their thousand mile journey is certainly a worth taking, but they don't actually take it. They take the first step, sure, but quit after a few hundred.
Since I am a mathematician, let's look at how many steps are in a thousand miles. 1,000 miles is 1,609 km. I am a tall guy with long legs and feel OK saying my stride is probably around one meter. Thus I would have to take one million six hundred and nine thousand steps. Realizing this it seems staggering, impossible. That first step is essentially meaningless. However, if I am diligent in taking steps, if I take one step every five seconds, let's say. I can walk almost four journeys of thousand miles over one year. Taking one step every fifteen seconds I can still walk a thousand miles over the course of a year and have a little bit of time left over to, I don't know, eat and sleep.
In summary, to reach a goal-to journey a thousand miles-one must be persistent. Consistency is far more important than enthusiasm. While the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, it's only finished by the willingness and discipline to keep taking steps.
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