Resolutions are aspirations

Every year I mention that I don’t believe in resolutions. No one seems to stick to them. They seem to slide into obscurity in February or March. I think we should be setting goals instead.

But maybe resolutions aren’t the bad guys I make them out to be.

Maybe resolutions can be an exercise in creativity. Goals offer structure. Most people know about SMART goals and follow that method. Even if you don’t know the specific SMART goal formula, goals tend to follow it fairly naturally.

Goals don’t necessarily allow us to dream big, but resolutions do. Resolutions don’t have a natural structure. You think, “what do I want to be better at this year?”. The possibilities are almost endless. If you can dream it, you can call it a resolution.

Resolutions are aspirational.

We can make resolutions to be more creative. To be a better person. To lose weight/start working out (that might be the most popular).

Sure, we could make those into goals with some work, but are we going to do that? Probably not. We want to believe we can change by thinking about it. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be better.

So dream big.

Write your dreams down. Revisit them every so often. You never know, someday you may turn those dreams into goals. Make your dreams your realities. Then you can make new dreams.

What resolutions will you make this year? I think ill resolve to be more creative and write more. I have no plans to make this happen, so maybe it won’t happen, but perhaps it will.