New Year's Resolutions: Taking Inventory On Personal Goals & Overall Priorities

By Nicholas F. Benton

It’s time for those New Year’s resolutions, and as much as they’re belittled and made the butt of endless jokes, they’re really not a bad idea.

How useful they may be to someone is directly linked to how much reflection is involved, and that takes setting aside some special time, even just an hour, without other distractions to review one’s year, one’s lifetime and one’s aspirations.

I have been though enough new years by now, running through enough stages of life, to have learned a few things about how folks most commonly handle this sort of thing, and what my own insights now are.

The most common reaction I have found, especially as folks are no longer in the climbing stages of their lives and have leveled off at their flying altitude, is one which says, in so many words, “I am making no resolutions, at all. The new year will be a continuation of the old and the idea of making life-changing resolutions is adolescent.”

OK, that sounds to me like someone who is not interested in coping with that hour of solitude once a year when the echoes of lost dreams or discarded yearnings may come to visit. Or, to give such persons more credit, maybe such reflections are a part of their everyday lives already, and thereby routinely built into their life decisions.

I guess all this has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Otherwise, the most common resolutions have to do with personal lifestyle issues, such as losing weight, getting into better shape, quitting smoking and finally having that long-awaited make-over, plastic surgery or new wardrobe.

In most of these cases, the resolve is to jack up one’s will power to overcome routines, habits and patterns deemed rooted too much in laziness or lack of will.

These are the resolutions most likely to crash and burn in the first few weeks of the new year, if not the first days or hours. Such an abrupt about-face on matters of habitual behavior simply does not jibe with either human nature or human physiology.

People find themselves at war with their own “dark sides” or “self-destructive tendencies” in such struggles, and almost always fail in such head-to-head combat, an in general such approaches should be limited to only the most extreme cases of need and then only with powerful support mechanisms in place.

On the other hand, there is more than one way to fight a war, and the writings of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, especially as they pertain to the exploitation of flanks and guerilla methods, can be instructive.

In short, many small occasions in which some advancement or an upper hand gained can add up.

This I find as the most useful approach to new year’s resolutions, especially when put in the context of a more inclusive evaluation of personal aspirations, no matter at what stage of life they come.

The first step in such an evaluation has to do with one’s life goals. Personal health, the maintenance or recovery of it, as important as that is, and as much as it tops most everyone’s (mine included) lists of resolutions, is after all a means to an end, enabling and empowering one to reach for something.

In terms of what that “something” might be for one person or the next, such decisions are quite personal and often only known to the person him or herself. They are commonly kept so deep inside one that they can be forgotten.

But in my personal experience, I find it is useful to reflect on what may wind up going through one’s mind as one lies on a death bed. It helps define genuine life priorities. In talking with others in that situation, and in my own reflections, I have found that it is personal relationships which matter most, and by a lot. It is not titles, awards, salaries or breathtaking travels and adventures which arise, but loved ones, cherished moments of intimacy, acts of simple kindness and little or big favors.

“I hope I have done right by you, by my loved ones and friends,” is what, in so many words, people I have known at their closest points to death have said or intimated.

Therefore, for my money, it is deepening and extending relationships of love and affection that lie at the heart of life goals. In this context, these can include professional achievements that empower and otherwise contribute positively to the lives of others, but must at their core embrace and enrich personal connections.

This, and whatever other goals one may assess, then involve issues of time management. How should I focus my energies to achieve my goals, and how can I prioritize my time commitments such that involvements that do not advance my goals can be identified and then subordinated or eliminated in the new year?

For example, in the area of giving, it is not just the monetary amount of contributions but their end use that deserves evaluating. Donations that get lost in a sea of 10s of millions are too often made in order to make the giver feel better, and not because they’ll make much of a dent in terms of actual need. With a little more attention, the same contribution more carefully made could make a major difference to any of a number of cases of real need. Once that’s resolved, then to pledge, so to speak, an increase in total giving for the year is one very rewarding resolution to make. It should come with a number, or at least a notion that the level of giving will rise by 5% or 10% or more.

Even in financially-tough times, unless one has been giving so generously before that maintaining such a level becomes unfeasible, an incremental increase overall, along with a vow to improve the “bang” for the “buck,” brings good karma all the way around going into the new year.

The same approach should go to issues such as time spent with loved ones, times devoted to volunteer work, time devoted to self-education, cultural events, weight loss, dietary improvements and personal fitness.

“Incremental” is the watchword. Truly, the health fitness industry, which always plans on a major bump up in sales and memberships each January, is out to drain your wallet just like anyone else, and will always want to sell you more than you really need.

They count on radical, self-flagellating bursts of “sheer will” to sign up folks to expensive contraptions that wind up gathering dust in basements or annual memberships that only the most obsessed can expect to capitalize on as bargains over the year.

The notion that a minimum of a certain amount of workouts per week is required to make gains in fitness seems like nonsense, especially given how widely the claims vary about how much exercise is needed to achieve results.

The fact is, it seems to me, that any exercise is better than no exercise, and while I adhere to the notion that certain junk foods ought to be banished entirely from one’s diet, I don’t subscribe to the idea that unless one can maintain a rigorous routine of workouts three or more times a week, one might as well give up on the idea altogether.

As for diets, remember friends, that the activities of the human body are fueled through a process of input/output. If one takes in more units of energy than one expends, then the body will tend to store the excess for its proverbial “rainy day.” Namely, it will gain weight.

Therefore, caloric intake (a calorie being a measure of energy) and output must be at the heart of any diet, and my best evidence shows that calories consumed in the form of fat are harder to metabolize into a comparable caloric output. Therefore, a low-fat, low-calorie diet works better than any other.

In this context, refined sugar is a universal evil when combined with lethargy, especially as it lurks in soda pop, candy and pastries, those sweet, seductive comfort foods contributing most to a national epidemic of obesity, the greatest hidden menace in the land.

Radical diets should be reserved for the most radical health problems. Reasonable balanced diets, minus excess fat and sweets, can bring about very positive results over time, especially when combined with any measurable increase in exercise. Isn’t that what Mama used to teach us?

Lots of water and brisk walking. Those can’t be overstressed. They factor into making all this work. Optimize potassium, minimize salt, make 1,000 mg. Vitamin C supplements a regular part of your daily diet.

Let’s also cut down on our debt in 2006, folks. The ridiculous interest rates being charged by credit card companies is downright usury, and in some circles (such as in the arena of common sense), that’s a sin. So, stop sinning in 2006! Stop allowing your hard-earned income to be sucked out of your wallet in this way. Draw down your debt by starting with the high-interest stuff, and getting rid of it all as fast as possible.

Other debts, such as mortgages and home-equity loans, come with much lower interest rates, and should be tackled only when all the credit card debt is banished for good. Efforts at loan consolidation, if necessary, should be undertaken if one’s total credit card debt persists from month to month above $10,000. But to the extent it can’t all be eliminated in this or other ways, eating away at that debt is very important.

Try this approach: vow that half or a third of all the money you save in interest payments by drawing down your debts goes to your net charitable giving for the new year. Plenty of good karma comes with that.

Of course, there are the special goals of those to graduate from whatever school they’re in, to pass the Bar or CPA exam, earn that long-sought promotion or win a national figure skating championship. Wherever such specific benchmarks exist in one’s life, then definitely resolve to conquer.

As for other stuff, such as getting the kitchen re-done or taking that Caribbean cruise you’ve promised yourself, they’re fine and good, but it seems to me fall further down on the list of priorities.

In the final analysis, it’s the goal-based prioritization that matters most of all. Establish and vow not to deviate from that, and you’ll have a good road map for your new, and hopefully wonderful, year.