New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year!

Ok, You know the drill:

Time to get super model thin, be more organized than Martha Stewart, and manage money like Bill Gates.  If you are an overachiever, you will need to add:

1. A spiritual goal: pray more, be more charitable, more church, less sin

2. A family goal: This is the year you are going to spend more time with the family, be nicer to your husband’s/wife’s family, start a family, go on a family vacation.

3. A mental goal: Read more, learn something new, start school, finish school

4. Personal improvement: Learn the piano, cello, flute, learn a language, update wardrobe, make friends, date more

Exhausting! And cliche! And ridiculous! Half of these won’t make it past the first 2 weeks of January and the rest die an ignominious death before Valentines Day, as we realize we are not organized even though we pinned all those cute pictures on Pinterest, chocolate tastes way better than celery, and learning Italian is overrated.

Who even speaks Italian, and why did we ever want to learn it in the first place?

I was that person, believing that I must list (and overcome) my every imagined defect as outrageous goals every year, only to realize every Jan 1 that I had, once again, not become the perfect person I had envisioned.  How could I? My bar was set so high, there was no chance of my going over it…I could barely see it!  For several years I refused to make any kind of resolution at all. Then, one year, I was led to realize that I was missing out. I wasn’t being Maren, only desperately wishing to be the person I wished she was.

I was suffocating in the belief that since I couldn’t be everything on my long list of resolutions, I must be nothing.

Now, each year, I take all of January to look back over the previous year and note strengths and weaknesses, achievements and failures, and progress, not necessarily completion, on personal goals. And here’s my thinking; If you are still making resolutions through all of January, there’s no chance of messing up IN JANUARY. Smart, right?  I keep a notebook for this, and am able to look at the prior year’s summary, and see where I’ve been, and how I’m doing.  And  then, this is crazy, but I realized I was not this horrible, fat person who can’t learn Italian, keep a closet straight, or do anything right, but a really busy, whole, amazing, beautiful woman who is doing her best. I discovered authenticity, and found myself happier.

Wow!

Then, I make a few goals. Authentic to my life and hopeful. Meaningful to me. Some serious, some fun.

Sound like work? More work than your oh-so-sensible plan to go the gym everyday for the rest of your life even though you despise exercise and spandex, and the gym? More work than somehow becoming organized despite your proclivities toward stuffing socks and candy wrappers into the couch when the doorbell rings unexpectedly? (oh, wait, that’s me…)

I dare you to make one resolution that makes you smile. One that makes you look forward to working on said resolution.

Last year, my fun one was to read 100 books. That was really fun! One serious one included finishing our room remodel somewhere…anywhere near… our budget. And we did! (Sort of…)

I’m still working on this year’s, but I promise to share when I’m done.

And one more thing:

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.(page 49)”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are