Every year I write New Year's resolutions. It started when I was a pre-teen. My mom had a tradition that we write down our personal goals for the new year. Then as the ball was dropping, we would eat grapes, blow our horns and anxiously join the countdown. At midnight, we would tear up our resolutions into tiny paper bits and fling them out the window for Old Man Winter to carry away into the land of future promises, all while loudly playing a tin-foil kazoo into the dark cold of the night. Early that morning, the men would walk through our home, and my mother would be sure to have black-eyed peas and collard greens on the stove - for prosperity of course.
Now I am old enough to have my own family and every time I describe this childhood tradition to my upstanding friends, I have to explain that throwing tiny scraps of paper out of a 4th floor tenement in New York City in the 90's is hardly shocking.
Well, some traditions withstood the test of time, and whilst I do not throw paper out the window and onto the lawn of my own new home, I still write my resolutions every December 31st. I believe in writing things down because the mind has a funny way of encrypting visuals into its databank. More on that later. In the most recent years I give myself a theme to live by. It sets the tone for my resolutions so that I can always remember to stick to them. Last year was the Golden Year. I had resolved that everything I touched would be blessed.
This New Year's Eve, I created a theme for this to be my Year of Discipline. You see, I may have achieved a golden year in 2018 if I had just done the things on my resolution list! I seem to have let shiny, sparkly, golden objects distract me from my goals. It is okay because the best thing that I can do for myself is identify this pattern and work to correct it. So I started my Year of Discipline off with a challenging Daniel Fast. It is what works for me. Now we are almost done with January and I feel so much stronger. I have confidence and I will accomplish my resolutions this year.
Do you have any special New Year's Eve traditions? What do you think about creating resolutions?
