Happy 2022 — civilizations around the world have been celebrating the start of each new year for at least four millennia. Today, most New Year’s festivities begin on December 31 and continue into the early hours of January 1. Common traditions include attending parties, eating special New Year’s foods, making resolutions for the new year and watching fireworks displays.
Years ago, in Babylon, the first new moon following the vernal equinox — the day in late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness — heralded the start of a new year.
Throughout antiquity, civilizations around the world developed increasingly sophisticated calendars, typically pinning the first day of the year to an agricultural or astronomical event.
January 1 became the first day of the year when the Gregorian calendar was instituted, but Christian leaders temporarily replaced January 1 as the first of the year with days carrying more religious significance, like December 25th — Pope Gregory XIII re-established January 1 as New Year’s Day in 1582.
And then, of course, there is the time honored tradition of making resolutions for the new year. You all know that I faithfully make resolutions every year, and every year I explain why it’s not necessarily stupid, but it is, for most people, a fruitless exercise.
The practice of making resolutions for the new year is thought to have first caught on among the ancient Babylonians, who made promises in order to earn the favor of the gods and start the year off on the right foot.
I recently read that 72 percent of people over the age of 45 and 40 percent of those 45 or younger don’t bother to make resolutions. For those who do make a New Year’s resolution, less than 25 percent stick with them after 30 days and only 8 percent actually follow through on their resolutions.
As I say every year, why do we even bother with resolutions that are so predictably unachievable?
Well, here’s at least part of the problem…. resolutions are usually (often lofty) goals. Goals are outcomes — resolutions are actions.
If you look back over the past several years at my resolutions (check the archives if you’re interested) you’ll see that I’ve recently followed some “rules” when writing them. My resolutions have focused more on the process, not the goal. For instance one of my resolutions was to drive by the Shepherd Wellness Center a number of times — not to get in shape or improve my fitness.
Also, success with a resolution is tied to the discipline of performance rather that that of achievement. One of my resolutions was write a “tweet.” Notice that I didn’t say I was actually going to “tweet” anything. So I can succeed just by writing down something that could be “tweeted” without having to actually complete the process.
I’m sure people like me will continue to make resolutions — hopefully, we will resolve to do things that we’ll be glad we did when we look back on 2022….
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