everyday success

Success

Where Does That New Years’ Resolve Go?

Is it a wistful memory by June?  Does it fall into the “meant to but didn’t” category?  Is it that note in a stack of stuff you’ll get to?  It is New Years’ Day 2012.  How did you do with your resolve in 2011?  I’m mortified to say it.  My net weight loss, year over year, is three and a half pounds.  That’s right, I wrote it in words not numbers so it can look a little mightier.  It’s not the twenty I resolved.  It’s not even the fourteen I actually lost.  No, a measly 3-1/2 pounds.

What happens to that New Years’ resolve? Often, it’s as simple as life happens.  We get so busy, so caught up in the demands of our lives that fledgling habits, small battles won, get lost to the busyness.  Perhaps that New Years’ symbol of a baby should sit at the top of our list reminding us that a resolution starts out in its infancy, a change, a f way of doing something.  That means it will need to be nurtured, carefully looked after – throughout the year.

Experts advise that we can build a new habit in thirty days.  That may be true but that habit remains new and needs care.  It is so easy to slide right back.  The slide back is not out of complacency so much as it is out of everyday demands.  Suddenly, our eye is off the ball and those tiny early-in-the-year successes are replaced by the immediacy of other demands. 

My New Year Resolve 2012 comes with an image for my mind’s eye.  It’s of a seedling emerging with tiny green leaves that, with my personal care, will burst into full life as a tree.  I like trees.  You may prefer to see a rose or a tomato plant or even a house from its foundation to its roof.  It’s a simple reminder, an image to help keep that resolve alive even when other demands fight for first place.      
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