A New-Year How-To

Here we go again: another new year, more resolutions, more fear of failure, some hope that next year will be better than the last. All of us are focused on self-improvement, to make better our lives and that of our families next year. Don't we try to do that every year? So what happens?

All of us are looking for a clean slate, and the most logical time to start is at a new mile marker: the new year, the new month, the next birthday. We feel that we are somehow capable of keeping the slate shiny and new if we can simply be given the clean slate first. Then, it is just a matter of maintaining, right?

Allow my digression for a moment. Have you ever been so far behind on a task - charting, emails, housecleaning - that you feel like you are always playing catch-up? Then you find yourself wishing for just one uninterrupted day to make a dent in your mountain of work, so you could feel better and not so stressed. How often do we get that opportunity?

Not often. Whose fault is that? Our childrens’ for constantly needing to be fed and always wanting our love and attention? Those pesky kids. Or our spouse's fault for wanting to have some cuddle time or a movie night? Yuck.

You know I am being facetious. There are responsibilities that are not as enjoyable that often make us feel like the mundane overtake the extraordinary possibilities in life: laundry, caring for an ailing parent, even our jobs. These are the things outside of ourselves that seem to impede our goals for personal and inward improvement. Suddenly, we find ourselves embroiled in bitterness towards those around us, and we see everyone and everything as a roadblock on our path to perfection.

“Bitterness is the poison we drink, expecting the other person to die.” I cannot remember who said it first, but those are certainly words to live by. But what does this have to do with our new year's resolutions and starting afresh?

Original artwork: Cassandra Anandappa Tamayo

Starting from scratch takes just as much fortitude as maintaining a streak. To boot, that clean slate does not need to start on a special date. In fact, it could even be moment to moment. I use this explanation when I talk to my patients about diet and exercise every day. Just because you fall off of the wagon at lunchtime does not mean you have already messed up the rest of the day. In fact, that is temporally impossible given that the future has not happened yet, and therefore can still be altered. If you are hating yourself because you ate healthily at breakfast, but sneaked a cookie at lunchtime, there is no reason to say “screw it" and eat half a pizza for dinner followed by a pint of ice cream. You exacerbated the failure, as opposed to recognizing the failure and resolving to make better decisions the rest of the day. Even if you make small failures each day, whether it’s diet, housecleaning, or making headway on a personal project, by you can still make progress as long as you see the very next moment as a new opportunity to change the future. Even if it is two steps forward and one step back every day, you will still be going in the right direction.

It is disheartening to mess up or fail at something we truly want. But if we truly want it, why do we sabotage ourselves the moment things get challenging or we slip up?

Well I don’t sabotage myself, all this other stuff gets in the way!

So what are you going to do about it?

I CAN'T do anything about it!

So why did you set the goal in the first place?

Because I know it’s important and I want to accomplish this.

So if it is that important, shouldn't you keep trying?

….I would hope the answer is yes.

Starting a new year with a clean slate is a completely false notion. We are never a clean slate. We are always tainted by our past failures and personal baggage, and we are reminded of this fact as soon as our resolutions become more difficult to fulfill or we fail, and so we stop trying, defeated and deflated.

So why on earth do we keep doing this to ourselves every year?

Because we all know in our flawed collective heart of hearts that we are meant for more. We are destined for more. We are meant to be better than who we are today. We simply do not always know how to get there. I think that will always be a work in progress, but the most important thing I remind myself every day, even every moment, is to keep trying. The only thing scarier than the vast unknown of the future is the finite but unsatisfactory version of my past self. So, we have to keep moving forward, as surely as the clock moves forward toward midnight of December 31st, we too are pulled forward into the unknown next moments. Every moment is an opportunity to choose our own ending, like those beloved Goosebumps novels - except infinite, and we can’t cheat by skipping pages.

We pick an action, we make it, maybe it works out, or maybe it ends in failure. But I say fail, fail, and fail again, because at least that shows you are trying. If you are trying, that means you have hope. If you have hope, you may not cruise to shore, but at least you will float with the current.

Happy new year, and I pray that you are blessed with the strength and hope to keep trying every moment.

Original artwork: Cassandra Anandappa Tamayo