Here is a New Year's resolution worth keeping
Happy New Year! Although Baha’is (and many others, including Hindus, Jews and Muslims) celebrate the new year on a different date, we know the majority of our fellow citizens look to Jan. 1 as the beginning of another year, and we add to theirs our prayers and hopes for positive change in the next 365 days.
A common and commendable practice at the beginning of the year is, of course, making resolutions indicating your intentions to improve yourself in some way throughout the coming months. We all know the most common ones: losing weight, saving money, exercising regularly, getting organized, eating a healthy diet. All of these are worthy goals and yet one recent poll found that it takes, on average, just 32 days for them to be broken. Why such a high failure rate? According to a 2014 study, these were the most cited reasons for failure: setting unrealistic goals, not keeping track of progress, making too many resolutions and simply forgetting about them.
Clinical psychologist Sabrina Romanoff suggests transforming goals into values — a mind shift that she maintains can empower you to stick to your resolutions. “Values are never actually achieved,” she says, “rather, they operate as a compass, constantly informing and guiding our behaviors.”
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I’m not a psychologist or a sociologist but, if I’m understanding the concept of values correctly, especially personal values or core beliefs, they include those intangible qualities which very much have to do with spirit. These may include compassion, mercy, trustworthiness, kindness, gratitude, empathy, humility, honesty and other attributes you may strive to reflect. These are the very virtues which the great religions have taught for centuries.
When reviewing the list of the most common new year’s resolutions, it quickly becomes apparent that they deal with the physical aspect of life. There is nothing wrong with that — after all, we are living in a physical world. However, if we take Dr. Romanoff’s advice to change the way we think about resolutions, and infuse them with spirit, if you will, perhaps that will improve our chances for success.
Even though I’m sure it can be done, it may be a bit of a challenge to take a resolution to lose weight or get organized, change the way you look at it, and infuse it with spirit. I’d like to offer an alternative. Throw out those four or five or more resolutions and make just one: to bring yourself to account each day.
In a book of Baha’i scripture called “The Hidden Words of Baha’u’llah,” he says, “O Son of Being! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds.”
This simple spiritual practice of checking your behaviors each day and then reflecting upon the changes you need to make to align yourself more closely with your core beliefs will, indeed, help you make those changes. I’ve called it “simple,” but that does not mean it’s easy. The difficult part of this practice comes with making it a habit. Motivation for making it a habit, though, might well be found in the last part of the quote which reminds us that our time on this physical plane of existence is short and our graduation into the next life will include an accounting for our deeds here.
For all of us, the year ahead will certainly include the joys and sorrows which are part of being human. Here’s to our struggle toward the divine!
Nancy Flood-Golembeck is a retired teacher and longtime member of the Baha’i faith.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: This is a New Year's resolution worth keeping
