This Year, Make Resolutions Rooted in Joy—Not Punishment

New Year's Resolutions get a bad wrap.

At this point, it's almost assumed that you’ll fail at whatever it is you said you would do before February even starts. It is something advertisers and gyms count on, and make plenty of money from. But why is this? Why does something that has plenty of potential to be a good thing never actually shake out to be a good thing? I venture to say that the main reason is that the majority of New Year’s Resolutions stem from a place of guilt and even shame, and not from a positive place of celebration or growth. 

A little lesson in Gratitude

Let’s take a step back here and talk a little bit about gratitude. Gratitude is sort of the superpower of emotions. It is considered to have the highest vibrations of all of the emotions and it has the power to shift perspective in a major way. We spend so much of our lives hyper-fixated on what we do not have, we don’t have the nice car we want, we don’t have the waistline we want, we are jealous of a friend who just got engaged, and the list goes on. 

This is a sort of scarcity mindset, gratitude flips the script and puts us in a mindset of abundance. Using the examples I just mentioned, a place of gratitude would shift the thoughts to, I am grateful for the car I have, I can get from point A to point B safely, I am grateful for my body, I am fortunate for the body I have and that I can move around freely in it, I am grateful my friend found love and I know that someday I will find a partner I love and cherish, but at this present moment, I am grateful for my alone time and my peace.

See how it works? Nothing concrete changed, you have the same car, the same body, and you are still single, but what do you have the power to change? Your mindset. 

Back to the New Year’s Resolutions

So back to the resolutions, so many of them often come from a place of shame, guilt, of envy, and not from a place of gratitude. This is not to say that you can’t ever want better for yourself, or want to change, that is crazy. But it is about the way you manifest and work to make these changes. Let’s say generally you want to be more active, your resolution should not be, ‘to go to the gym every day until you have abs’. This comes from a place of shame about the state of your body and it sounds like a punishment, especially if you are not used to going to the gym regularly. Instead, a much better resolution would be ‘I want to move my body more, in a way that makes me feel good’. The general goal is the same, but we are not focused on self-hatred, aesthetics, or punishing ourselves. 

To wrap things up, the most important thing when it comes to making and following through on New Year's Resolutions is making sure they come from a place of self-compassion and gratitude. It is never beneficial to focus on what we lack and then feel guilty about the distance between where we are and where the person we envy is. Celebrating what we already have, our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our uniqueness. And guess what? When our goals and resolutions are celebratory, and kind to ourselves, it is much easier to stick to them. I challenge you to make more positive resolutions or if they are already made, modify them to be kinder and more grateful. Because come on, the best way to not fail is to not set yourself up for failure. 

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