Living life like it’s Thanksgiving Day with my New Years Resolutions

Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day are bookend holidays.  You’ve got major religious holidays between them and all sorts of retail sales, family obligations and social events jammed in too.   The bookend dates, and the New Years Resolutions that follow, highlight things that we could and in some cases should do every day.  However we’ve become conditioned to think that if it doesn’t happen on that day then you have to put it off until that date next year in order to start again.

Folks in North America know the deal on Thanksgiving.   Big feast, Mayflower, pilgrims, native Americans/Indians, fast forward 400 years and here we are.  The day Thanksgiving, though, is all about acknowledging what we have and being thankful for it.

I don’t mean ‘have’ in the physical sense of having more than another person has.  Certainly it can be thought of in that send.  However, I mean have as in, I can see, I hear the birds sing, the disc pain in my back is gone or other seemingly simple things.  It’s the really simple things that may have been weakened, taken away or are ebbing and flowing as we get older.

No matter what setbacks you’ve encountered there must be something that you can be thankful for.  Sure, things could always be better with more of this or less of that, but there is something that you can be thankful for.

That ties into New Year’s Resolutions.  I try to start or stop certain things every year.  It could be to work out more, eat better, waste less time or be cleaner.*  However, when the rubber hits the road there is no difference between January 1 and March 7.  I know that and there’s nothing stopping me from starting or stopping said action on a day other than a New Year’s Resolution.  It’s just that there is something clean and finite about doing or not doing something during a new calendar year.

If that were the case then Alcoholics Anonymous and people who wanted to stop smoking** would only start the process on January 1 as part of their New Year’s Resolutions.  Obviously, they don’t and that’s a great thing for them.

There are many reasons why folks fail on their New Years Resolutions.  They’re too big in scale, unrealistic and most importantly, they didn’t change their mind set.  That’s been my issue.  I’ve wanted to keep a cleaner office and do other things, but I only thought it and didn’t really do anything to alter habits or change behavior.

This year my goals will be smaller and more achievable in nature.  Success in smaller doses tends to yield long term positive results.  It’s similar to how Dave Ramsey recommends paying down your debts.

And in a way I’m thankful for the things that I’m resolving to improve upon.  They’ve made me the parent and person that I am today.   Similar to “This” the song by Darius Rucker, everything leads you to ‘this’.  It might have seemed bad or unfortunate at the time, but now it’s a part of your fabric so roll with the punches, learn from it, deal with it, change it and move on.

*Those are just examples and in no way reflect the state of cleanliness in the house, waist line, bags of flax or other nutrition oriented things in the kitchen.

**It’s a bit old and from Thailand, but this is a rock star quit smoking ad.