Resolutions…

This is about as esoteric and off the subject of fashion as I will ever get on this site, and I promise next week we’ll be back on target.  However, I keep coming across all of these media stories about New Year’s resolutions and how to keep them, and it’s both fascinating and disturbing.

The psychology behind a New Year’s resolution is puzzling.  We initially make this resolution with steadfastness and often-grim determination because, let’s face it, it’s usually a promise about something we really don’t want to do in the first place, or is challenging for us to keep up for a long period of time.  If it weren’t so difficult, we’d already be doing it, no?

So, of course, two or three months into the new year you’ve lost a fair amount of enthusiasm about this new, very trying resolution, and before the year is halfway through you’ve given up on it, and you’re frustrated and disappointed in yourself because of it.  It all seems very self-destructive — rather like cutting off your foot right before a marathon – you’ve set yourself up to fail (or at least be in a lot of pain).

Why not establish a ‘life resolution’?  Something basic that you desire to do that will improve yourself or humanity?  Something that you consistently strive to accomplish every day in your life, and re-address every year?  There’s no expiration date, no frustrating time constraint, no deadline that you’re almost guaranteed to miss.

My life resolutions are pretty much the same every year:

Treat others as you wish to be treated.

Remember that what goes around comes around.

Be open to new possibilities and ways of thinking.

Be as true to yourself and what you believe in as you possibly can.

Care for yourself – if you don’t you’re no good to anyone else.

Have faith in the innate goodness of humankind.

Know that everything happens for a reason.

So, when I start getting wrapped up in artificiality and unrealistic expectations — when the world tries to convince me that it’s imperative to keep up with the Kardashians, or make sure my toothpaste is sexy enough, or attempts to frighten me with commercials that spend 30 seconds of their one minute explaining the potentially fatal side effects of their amazing new drug, I remind myself of the above.

And, to clarify – just because I use these as my life resolutions doesn’t mean I don’t have bad days where I forget one or all of them, that I walk through life with unwavering confidence or, for that matter, that I only watch PBS.

I have plenty of lousy days where I’d just as soon stay in bed, question myself constantly, and without apology watch “Wipeout” and “Dancing with the Stars” every week.  I just thought I’d share this with you in the hopes that you get something out of it that makes your 2011 just that much better.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE