Day: 7 January 2014

Recently, I had a chat with a friend about the new year;what should be expected and the likes. The chat was going on well and all of a sudden she said in a very careless tone  ‘I no longer do new year resolutions.’

I was going to ask her where did that one come from,  in the sense that I don’t know how such an idea got into her head let alone hearing her say it.

“Sorry…”  She laughed at me and repeated herself. She added that it is childish. Gone are the days when in the beginning of a year people make lists of things they want to do; lose weight and quit smoking, nothings changes it is the same like in the past days and past year. She really made herself clear.

I had to listen to all of that despite knowing I had heard enough. However, I knew it would get to my turn and that she would have to take in what I was going to say.

In my opinion, such lists are not applicable to everyone. Cliches like that are overly rattled and not paid attention to. Besides, when we talk about the new year resolution it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are about discarding all our previous ways of life or former ways of doing things.

In fact, towards the end of a year, I like doing a total reflection of the whole year; how I have fared, whether I achieved some set targets, unexpected favours, difficult situations and how I handled them, some nice people I met, people who influenced me, people who challenged me-those that made me put in more effort at some point, personal improvements…the list is endless. This is my kind of list and obviously with this, I usually have some provisions for some new year resolutions because there are things I would like to carry along, some modified while others dropped. They equally groom one properly as they attain certain life milestones.

I gave her some examples that were applicable to her and at the end she agreed with me but said she still don’t call them resolutions. I didn’t argue further since the problem now is the word and not the act. We never used the word ‘Resolution’ but settled for making some ‘modifications’ and ‘new decisions’ where necessary.

By the time you know it, we were back to our new year yarn; what we would love to achieve in it and how we are going to go about it.

I know she wouldn’t be the only one with such perception of the new year resolution albeit, there could be other reasons why people ditch resolutions in the beginning of a year. However, I would like us to see the need to make certain life adjustments when a new year sets in- no mater how little they are.

Lastly, I was pleased we had that chat within the first week of the first month of the year and I know this is very likely to be your first time of reading this post in the first month of the year. Did I mention that my friend is neither fat nor smokes yet the first set of resolutions she could think of was to lose weight and to quite smoking.

Plan well and achieve your dreams friends.