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Printer-Friendly ModePerseverance, not fresh starts, key to achieving one's goals
August 31, 2009 —
My friend tells me she hates going to the gym in January — the month brings with it three things: slick roads, holiday pounds and New Year’s Resolutions. That last one, she says, is the worst.
With the dawn of Jan. 1, the newly invigorated decide it’s time to go.
Without warning, treadmills are spoken for, weight machines have long lines, and every elliptical is occupied. At some point, however, time does what time will do. Days pass, the room clears and my friend’s silent solace returns.
This half-hearted pilgrimage prompts two key questions of human nature: One, what’s so special about a new year? And two, if it’s so special, why can’t many keep a promise with it?
We have a calendar-worshiping culture that applies meaning to certain days of the year.
It seems we can pull energy from an atmosphere. In our minds, there’s something about a fresh start that makes anything seem possible.
I don’t know if the wounds are healed with the turn of a calendar page, but the battles you’ve fought seem not to have touched you anymore. You’re unbruised, unbroken.
Your faith is perfectly intact. You’re ready to start anew.
The problem with revering a new year is that once you’ve cracked it open, it’s only a matter of time before its zing goes flat.
That dastardly “resolution” is a long-held custom of setting ourselves up to fail.
Quitting something like the gym rarely comes after days’ deliberation. Usually, it begins with a thought like, “Oh, I’ll do that tomorrow — I know I’ll have more time.”
Then that tomorrow comes with just as loaded a schedule as today did. You begin to wonder whether it’s your life or your obligations. Thoughts of the gym degrade to resentment.
Over time, your old goal becomes a scar, a sneering reminder of your failure to commit and follow through with a proposed goal.
As is natural, you choose to turn away from it.
Writers are one brand of people who seem to have particular issues committing to their craft.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love, has an insight she offers them, and it’s one that applies to anyone who wants to promise themselves something.
She says the most important thing a writer can have is neither talent nor dedication. (If you’re passionate about what you do, she says, you’ll develop those on your own.)
The crucial thing, the pivotal element, she says, is the act of selfforgiveness. In our culture, yes, we invest a great deal of hope into fresh beginnings.
It sounds fatalist, but here’s the truth: you are going to fail. Now, the key to finding success was never that fresh start.
It’s always in finding the way to continue even after you’ve hit rock bottom — it’s in finding out how you can make every start feel like a fresh one.
The inspiration of a new year is a learned idea. Consider unlearning it. Every day can be a beginning, and you deserve to make however many it takes.
My advice? Whenever you need to, take several deep breaths and recite these words: “I forgive myself.” Those will serve you well in any endeavor.
If you want to do something, and do it well, then do a little bit of it every day.
And if one day comes when you don’t do it, then don’t worry. You decide your next start. Do something, however small, that you know will take you one step closer to a goal. And good luck. You have a gift.
You, dear friend, have a fresh school year ahead of you.