For over 4,000 years people have wished each other a HAPPY new year as they engaged in cultural rituals to invite prosperity into the year ahead. In our family, we eat Hopping John on New Year’s Day, a Southern tradition to invite prosperity in the new year. The black-eyed peas symbolize coins and good luck. We also place kadomatsu by the door. Composed of pine needles for longevity and health, and bamboo for vitality and prosperity, kadomatsu invites the Shinto god Toshigami-sama to bring good luck and blessings.

Making “New Year’s Resolutions” is a cultural ritual with long historical roots. Ancient Babylonians promised to repay their debts. Ancient Romans promised good behavior. Whether these resolutions were kept is unknown.

In more recent times, folk wisdom and statistics indicate that many resolutions are made, and most remain unfulfilled at the end of the year.

Making Resolutions

The top five resolutions in 2024 were: saving money; being happy; exercising more; improving physical health and eating a healthier diet. Items two and five are subsets of item three. Plus, it’s hard to tell if resolutions to improve one’s health are personal commitments, or a reflection of cultural messages, as in “I should improve my health.”

The key question is, just because we should do something, are we committed enough to do something about it? The state of “being happy,” is an immeasurable goal. And the commitment to saving more money is ambiguous at best. In 2023, 94 percent of people who made New Year Resolutions failed to keep them. In fact, so m any people abandon their resolutions before February, that National Quitters Day is acknowledged the second Friday in January. This year it falls on January 10th.

The most common resolution is to exercise more — whether that means more than never or more than three times weekly often remains unspecified. About 10 percent of gym membership sales are at the beginning of January. However, actual gym participation begins dropping off the third week in January.

SMART Goal Setting

The difference between a generic, fallible New Year Resolution and a successful achievement is setting SMART goals. A goal is more than a promise or resolution. It is a commitment. A SMART goal is a goal with an action plan.

SMART goals are:
• Specific – Defining what will be accomplished & how it will be achieved
• Measurable – Incorporating trackable benchmarks
• Achievable – Is the goal something that can be achieved?
• Relevant – The reason for the goal
• Time-Bound – When will the goal be achieved

My Goals for 2025

So, what am I resolved to do in 2025? My professional goals for 2025 are reasonably SMART.

At the top of my list is publishing Sea Tigers & Merchants as an audiobook. This goal is deferred from 2024, due to technical difficulties. At this point, it looks like a spring launch is reasonable.

My second goal is to complete the as yet untitled prequel to my Salem Stories series. Mention the word Salem, and people think of witches. Every Halloween we hear about the 17th century witch hysteria that took place. But, what happened before that first arrest? What changed between 1672 and 1692? These are my questions as I write the stories of a few of the people involved in the events that closed out 17th century Salem. I’m hoping to release this summer.

My personal goal is to reduce my stress points and remember that all things happen in their own time. I cannot hurry them or delay them. I can only follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s advice to “Smile, Breathe, & Go Slowly.”

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Sandra’s Books: Sea Tigers & Merchants. Ambition, Arrogance & Pride. Saxon Heroines. Two Coins. Rama’s Labyrinth.

Illustrations & A Few Sources

Kadomatsu by Author; New Year Postcard; Gym Cardio Area. Photo by www.localfitness.com.au; SMART poster by Author; Woman with Wax Tablet & Stylus. Linda Poon. “The Rise & Fall of New Year’s Fitness Resolutions.” Bloomberg. Jan. 16, 2019. Simon Bell. “SMART Goals.” Mindtools.

The post Setting Resolutions & Pursuing Goals: An Annual Tradition first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Notice I used the word “goal,” not “resolution.” Our culture has used the new year as an opportunity to make new “resolutions” for so long the term is all but meaningless. On the other hand, the process is worth considering.

According to Peter Economy, 60 per cent of Americans make new year resolutions. Over half of those fail by January 31. On the up side, 8 percent of Resolvers achieve the goals they set. If you made new year resolutions, you might want to review them to assess your chances of success. Are your goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely? If so, you could be one of the 8 percent.

So, what kinds of things do people resolve to do?

Seventy-one percent resolve to eat differently, usually in the form of a diet or a greater selection of healthy foods. I’m already a fan of foods that are fresh and green. Some of my constant edibles are
dark chocolate, for its anti-oxidant properties, and also because I really like chocolate; nuts and seeds, which I grab when the munchies hit, and yogurt mixed with granola, my go-to breakfast. Leave a comment and share your favorite healthy foods.

Sixty-five percent of people making a new year resolution promise to exercise more. This is why January is a busy month at your local gym. I’m doing okay in this category, though there’s always room for improvement. The good news is, active movement in daily activities counts for fitness.

Interestingly, with 71 percent of resolvers adjusting their diet, and 65 percent doing more exercise, only 54 percent selected the weight loss option

Seventeen percent of the folks in Peter Economy’s report resolve to read more, an activity that is good for developing our intelligence, skills in problem solving, vocabulary, and ability to analyze unfamiliar situations. Twenty-six percent hope to learn a new skill, which may be as helpful as reading.

Sadly only 13 percent said they wanted to spend more time with family or friends.

Equally disheartening is that popular new year resolutions are about the Resolver and his or her personal goals. We don’t look beyond ourselves into our community, workplace, or the world at large.

In 1917, a time when Americans were involved in World War I, B. C. Forbes, founder of Forbes Magazine suggested 57 goals. Some of these were for personal improvement, but others reached out to others. These included:

• Contributing to the world
• Doing tasks with greater cheerfulness
• Being more considerate of others
• Being an inspiration, not a “wet blanket”
• Exercising more self-control, self-reliance, and unselfishness
• Realizing how little I deserve and recognizing how much I have
• Making simplicity a part of myself

You can read the entire list here.

Goals that improve our health and financial well-being are practical choices resulting in good effects. If we could also resolve to look beyond ourselves, we could also evolve as members of a joint humanity.

A fresh year stretches before us. How do you want to spend it?

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Illustrations:

Happy New Year Card by Viscious-Speed. Creative Commons Attribution.

Photo of market display by author.

Fixed Wheel Adjustable Indoor Bike by WyrdLight.com

Miss Auras. Public Domain.

B. C. Forbes. Public Domain.

Abram Brown. “57 Time Tested New Year’s Resolutions for 2019. Forbes.  Jan. 1, 2019.

Peter Economy. “10 Top New Year’s Resolutions.” Inc. Jan. 1, 2019.

The post RESOLVE TO EVOLVE first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

“We will open the book,” wrote the poet Edith Lovejoy Pierce. “The pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called opportunity, and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

Do you have a blank journal where you jot down musings, observations, or reminders? Many of us possess such a journal, often purchased from a display near the cashier at a bookstore. So enticing with their smooth covers and ribboned page markers.

No bookstore nearby? Sometimes journals arrive as gifts. Either way, most often they sit on a shelf. Because, after all, who has time to write down random thoughts?

I don’t know when Ms. Pierce wrote the chapter called New Year’s Day. She died in 1983, before our lives were taken over by keyboards. Let’s take a moment to consider what she might have written on the first day of her Book of Opportunity. Do you think it was something as banal as a New Year Resolution?

A Resolution on New Year’s Day, or any other day, is simply a decision to do something, or not to do something. Secondarily, this decision may solve a problem or provide an answer.

That’s it.

In our culture, a New Year Resolution is nothing so much as a promise to yourself. You might keep it; you might not. Two years ago I “resolved” to get my digital photos into printed albums. It was an open-ended promise, because there was no deadline. I finished last month.

Western culture’s approach to the new year is rooted in Roman customs. When Rome was a Republic, new year celebrations took place near the Spring Equinox. Public ceremonies demanded the presence of all government officials and generals. As Rome acquired territory, the generals had a problem. Military campaigns took place in the spring, but couldn’t begin until ranking military officers returned from Rome.

About 300 BCE Romans shifted the start of the year to January, in honor of the two-headed god Janus, ruler of change and new beginnings. Conveniently possessed with two heads, Janus could look back to the old year and ahead to the new.  Public ceremonies occurred in the morning. The afternoons were for more personal celebrations. People gave each other honey and pears and wished friends and family a sweet new year.

During the Late Roman Empire, Christians began erasing pagan customs in favor of church observances. As the Middle Ages unfolded, the Church encouraged prayer vigils and confessions. Very grim, not to mention cold. The Church insisted the beginning of a new year was a perfect time to repent, beg forgiveness, and promise to do better. But try as it might, the Church was unable to persuade knights and lords to forgo their pleasures.

The VOW OF THE PEACOCK possibly evolved as an alternative to repentance. Medieval knights admired peacocks. They thought the splendor and colors of male plumage equalled the kings’ majesty. The knights also thought peacock flesh was the diet of valiant knights.

During the last feast of Christmas which probably occurred on January 5, ladies escorted a peacock into the hall. The peacock might be alive, but was usually roasted. It arrived with full plumage intact. Each knight placed his hand on the peacock and made a vow to renew his commitment to the rules and life of chivalry. The bird was then carved and portions given to each knight.

None of these early promises were called resolutions. The phrase didn’t appear until 1813 when a Boston newspaper used it. Puritans, the founders of Boston, used birthdays and the new year as a time when people should ponder their shortcomings and commit to better behavior. I’m guessing this is where our modern connotation of a new year resolution comes from. The Puritans conscientiously entered their faults and new resolve into their journals. They may have been more serious about the exercise than we are. If they failed, they went to hell, or so they thought.

Ms. Pierce was a twentieth century woman unlikely to be concerned with hellfire. She merely observed that each year our journal, like our calendar, is fresh and new – even if it’s a digital calendar. We write upon it what we will. And if we don’t share what we write, no one will ever know if we succeed or not.

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Illustrations from Wikimedia Commons.

Young Woman Reading A Book by Renoir. Public Domain.

Janus Statue. Vatican Museum. Public Domain.

Male Peacock by Alex Pronove. Creative Commons Attribution.

Roasted Peacock. From Vows of the Peacock. 15th Century. Public domain

A. L. “The Origin of New Year’s Resolutions.” The Economist. Jan. 5, 2018.

Evan Andrews. “5 Ancient New Year’s Celebrations.” History. Dec. 31, 2012.

Shanna Hehlen. “Why do we make New Year’s Resolutions?” Mental Floss. Dec. 31, 2017.

Katy Waldman. “Bring Back the Peacock Vow.” Slate. Jan. 3, 2014.

The post Journals, Peacocks, and New Year Resolutions first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Here it is – my first blog of 2017. Ouch! Still hurts to write the new date. As the illustration points out, it seems 1913 was only the day before yesterday. But time marches on and so does another year of celebratory rituals.

Rituals are closely related to routines, and one of my regular routines is to get away from my computer to walk by the sea. I’m not always sure this is good for me. I could be just on the verge of a fascinating plot point, but I tell myself I must go outside and see actual people. Sometimes I see something even better — in this case the Honu, or green sea turtles, I saw last week.

Not all routines are good, of course — which is probably how the custom of New Year’s Resolutions began. I will spare you the historical details. The point is, for some reason a new year marks the perfect time to RESOLVE to stop dancing above my neighbor’s apartment at 1:00 a.m. But will I? Perhaps I could dance in toe shoes instead of tap shoes…or maybe do a soft-shoe routine. Would that work?

Or, I RESOLVE to clean out the garage…except I found these really cool glass bottles and maybe I could use them for perfume bottles if I cleaned them out.

Ellen DeGeneres has a good routine about that sort of resolution and its cousin procrastination.

PROCRASTINATION

In short, Resolution’s cousin

Procrastination can destroy anyone’s resolve.

Actually, Resolution as a term for setting goals isn’t a good word to use, because we generally expect to break our Resolutions within two months and are seldom disappointed in that assumption. A few years ago I started using the term Revolution instead. As in, it would take a revolution for me to clean out the garage.

But wait, there’s a better way. A S.M.A.R.T way.

S.M.A.R.T has nothing to do with aggressive Resolutions or Revolutions. It uses a kinder term – goal-setting. Kinder because using the S.M.A.R.T. System you can’t fail. Well, you can if you want to. Check out this video featuring Smart Goal Man.

Smart Goal Man is mildly irritating, but he does make a S.M.A.R.T. point. Heh heh. In order for a Goal or Resolution or Revolution to succeed, it needs to be:

Specific or it can’t be achieved;

Measurable or we won’t know if we achieved it;

Attainable, because if my goal is to rapell down the Matterhorn

it isn’t going to happen, ever.

Realistic, see Attainable

Timely which I interpret as a goal that will or won’t happen

within a defined time period.

So, let’s take that from the theoretical to the actual.

I Resolve to Reach the Following Revolutionary Goal by the end of 2017:

Completed manuscript for MALICE: The Case that Scandalized 1883 Calcutta.

Will I succeed? Hmmm….We’ll know by this time next year.

What are your goals for 2017? Leave a comment.

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In case you’re wondering, G. T. Doran came up with the term S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting in 1981.

Images:

New Year Baby, 1913. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons

Bottle Collection by Russ Pollanen. Creative Commons Attribution. Wikimedia Commons.

Other illustrations by Author.

Resources:

Personal Goal Setting: Planning to Live Your Life Your Way. Mindtools.com

Golden Rules of Goal Setting: Five Rules to set yourself up for success. Mindtools.com

Michael Ditton. Start Smart Goals Setting. Goal Setting Basics

Doran, G. T. (1981). “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives”, Management Review, Vol. 70, Issue 11, pp. 35-36.

Will Meek. How to Set Goals. Psychology Today. Aug 25, 2013

The post S.M.A.R.T. GOALS for 2017 first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

My conscience sorely troubles

Because I find they always break

As easy as soap bubbles.

It’s happened again. Another perfectly good year coming to a close. Another chance to start over again with a new set of goals, or maybe recycle ones from last year. Actress and screenwriter Nia Vardalos (who brought us My Big Fat Greek Wedding in 2002) once said,

“My New Year’s Resolution List usually starts with the desire

to lose between ten and three thousand pounds.”

Losing weight was the top resolution in 2014, and will probably be equally popular in 2015.

The second most popular resolution was getting organized. Interesting.

I rather like the suggestion made by theater critic James Agate:

To tolerate fools more gladly,

provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

I think Agate was on to something – he found a goal that required little or no effort on his part.

Nothing like the traditional picture of Father Time giving advice to the New Year Baby to make you think of time passing. Not that the baby is paying any attention. Junior knows this year will be different. He won’t make the same mistakes his father did. That’s probably true.

And we resolve not to slack off like we did last year. We’ll start walking up the stairs instead of riding the elevator. We’ll go for walks in the park or with our dog around the block, getting fresh air and exercise.

We’ll eat at home more. And while we’re at it, we’ll eat more fresh vegetables. For dessert – guilt-free dark chocolate. Purely for its antioxidant content, of course.

And while we’re outside or at home cooking, we’ll invite actual people to join us. We’ll talk and make eye contact.

As for me, I’m going to publish my book this year.

Time is fleeting. If you’re going to announce your Resolutions, you’ve got three days to make them. Hint: It’s easier to lose three pounds than three thousand. Pick something reasonable.

RESOLVE TO ENJOY YOUR LIFE THIS YEAR.

Acknowledgements:
Featured Image: “New Year Resolution” 1909. US Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.

New Years Resolution Statistics. Statistic Brain. Here.

Quotations from BrainyQuote.com

“101 Easy to Follow New Year’s Resolutions.” Simple Truth. Here.

The post REASONABLE RESOLUTIONS first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.