NEW
YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
As the new year began I could not help but wonder
what to look forward to. I took my time last year to catalogue all the personal
dissatisfactions from my past, as many of you from all over the city, country
and the rest of the world had. Tradition dictates that every 365 days, you
should try to kick bad habits and start
your life anew so I sat down with a cup of coffee, a paper a pen and began reflecting.
I scanned through my personal goals, the projects I wanted to launch and habits
I intended to reform in me. A personal roadmap for the next 12 months, is what
I wanted to come up with and this time I'd do it right.
There
is hope
Neuroscience now confirms that replacing old habits
with default good ones takes a while,
but practice makes perfect. Old habits are hard to break and new habits hard to
form. This is because the behavioural patterns we repeat most often are
literally etched in our neural pathways. The new study offers hope for those
trying to kick bad habits. MIT neuroscientists have identified a small
region of the brain's prefrontal cortex
is responsible for moment by moment control of habits at a given time.
Therefore, there is hope of changing
habits or even reverting to old ones, good or bad.
The
changing world
According to Wikipedia and I quote, "The nature
of New Year's resolutions has changed during the last decades with many
resolutions being more superficial and appearance-oriented than in
previous times. At the end of 19th
century, a typical teenage girl's New Year's resolution was focused on good
works. She resolved to become less self centred, more helpful, a more diligent
worker, and to improve her internal character, body image, health, diet, and
desired possessions were rarely mentioned. At the end of 20th century, the
typical teenage girl's resolution is focused on good looks. She wants to
improve her body, hairstyle make up and clothing." Currently the most
popular new year's resolutions that all teenagers would also try out are attending
school more regularly, doing homework more regularly ,healthy course diets,
making oneself physically fit, saying no to fast-food and roadside food and
finally to volunteer when necessary. .
Among the most popular resolutions in the united
states of America include drinking less, eating healthy food, getting a better
education, getting better jobs, getting fit, losing weight, managing debts,
stress, quit smoking, reduce, re-use and recycle, save money, take a trip,
volunteer to help others. Indeed, these
roles in modern life are analogous to a multi-Decker club sandwich that gets
all mixed up once you take a bite. The layers in this sandwich are; employee,
wife, mother, housecleaner, household comptroller, social director, religious
leader. Just to mention a few. Add a few
more and you have the typical life of most women worldwide. What would Moses or
Jeremiah have to say about this?
Your Goal
I needed badly to be different. I
did not like the person I'd been the last year. I wanted to be a better person.
What would be the real method to take care of myself and my loved ones because
we are all victims of this modern dilemma? Apparently there is a gradual change
in what people consider important, based on the resolutions they make. Are
these changes good or bad? It's very evident that things are going from good to
worse. Our desperation has become impotent.
Your Predicament and your Odds.
Let us take one more look at our
typical teenager's resolutions and look at his resolutions as an adult.
Drunkenness, licentiousness, and profanity are on the rise. like a bushfire in
a savannah grassland. Resolutions are not being achieved by teenagers and they
get into adulthood messed up with debts, lifestyle diseases; developed by the
very habits they resolved to drop. The issues of the youth need to be addressed
the right way. The question that begs to be asked is this. Before you even
attempt this, what are your chances in becoming a model for others?
I needed to know the success rate
of those who have tried to do this and have failed so I learn from their
mistakes. It's one thing for people to learn from you, and it's another when
they learn from your mistakes. I wanted my mistakes to remain in the past,
where they belong, and not tagging along like a shadow. So before your life
turns out to be a lesson, you have to right the wrongs before the things you
have resolved to do different recur on your tidy list of resolutions after
every 365 days.
A 2007 study by Richard Wiseman, a
psychologist and author with a penchant for mass participation for experiments,
involving 3000 people showed that 88% of those who made New year's resolutions
fail, despite 52% being confident in the beginning. This makes a scant 12%
success rate for all those who make resolutions, confident or not. In the
Article "Why do people make New Year's resolutions?" Laurie L Dove
sources assert "While the majority
of Americans age 45 and younger plan to make a new Year's resolution, only 28%
of those 45 and older will vow to make
changes."
Clearly, experience trumps hope here.
You cannot wait to be 45 to do
this. Chances are, you will repeat the pattern, or you are tired of these
cyclical resolutions that have to be made every 365 days.
So Much For the Resolutions
The question that still stands is
this, how close are the resolutions we make close to what God would want us to
be? We must learn to seek God truthfully. In as much as God wants the youth to serve Him now, our
resolutions are far from what He commands in the bible. Our actions now dictate
whether we'll be dealing with problems in future or we'll have a sense of the
right perspective on life, having helped others too in this journey enabling
them too to get home in the end.
The Big Picture.
What many people who have had
this cyclic pattern never learnt in their youth is that life is a journey, not
a destination .You are travelling to the promised land. From the cradle to the
grave. It is a road, not the country; and those transient enjoyments which you
have in this life, lawful in their way,-those incidental and evanescent
pleasures which you may sip,-are not home; they are little inns only upon the
roadside of life, where you are refreshed for a moment, that you may take again
the pilgrim-staff and journey on seeking what is still before you- the rest
that remaineth for the people of God. Life is a remarkable and wonderful
journey that takes us up and down a road of happiness. What does Christ have to
say about your resolutions? "Come to me, all you who are
weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."Matthew 11:28-30
