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For years I thought New Year’s resolutions were stupid–we should be resolving to be better people all the time, not just once a year. I’ve since come around. While I still think self-awareness and -improvement is always healthy, the ritual of the new year marks the time. It gives us that elbow in the ribs, reminding us to slow down, to look around, to take stock of what’s going on in our hearts, our minds, and our lives.

I started resolving things years ago in a cabin in the Northwoods of Minnesota with four extraordinary women, but we didn’t call them “resolutions.” We wrote down, shared, and then burned (yes, burned . . . we really like ritual) things we wanted to let go of and things we wanted to hold onto for the new year.

I don’t think I’ve ever written a post that explicitly included my significant other, but  here goes, because I make Resolutions now in large part because of him. Last winter was my first new year with P. He turned to me as midnight neared and asked me what my resolutions were. On the spot I started brainstorming. He did the same. It ended up being this wonderful moment of sharing what we hoped for, of saying who we want to be in the coming year. While we see each other daily, this was a chance to articulate, clearly and out loud, what we wanted for ourselves. Throughout 2011 he held me to these resolutions, and they became more than momentary good intentions; thanks in part to him, they continued as a pole star off of which to gauge my progress, my position.

Now we’re at 2012, and we have a new set of resolutions. Again, we created them on the spot, but they’ve morphed over the last two days as we spin them around in our heads. To get our brain juices moving, we came up with suggestions for how to make resolutions.

1) Something you can achieve in the first week.
2) Something for others.
3) Something within yourself.
4) Something you want more of.
5) Something you want less of.

Mine don’t strictly follow that rubric, but they range from big to small, concrete to abstract.

  • I want to get my left foot out of my mountain bike pedals faster.
  • I want to have more fun when I ride with others and not worry so much about my performance.
  • I want to start a retirement account (it’s awfully embarrassing to admit that at 30 I don’t have one, but it’s an intimidating process to undertake seeing as I have no employer plan to guide me).
  • I want to find real joy and satisfaction in an activity that is not physical. I think this means investing myself in a project of some sort: learning something new, art, writing, cooking . . . something that is more than just passing time.
  • I want to find a place of calm and quiet in which to abide. I want to live more grounded, less anxious.

So far, that’s it. If they morph, I’ll try to update them. It’s scary, and kind of nice, to have them “published” in this public space–one more layer of accountability. Now the task is to figure out how to make these resolutions reality.

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