Mid January Check in on New Year’s Resolutions
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, CAC, PMI-ACP, RYT
By Mid-January – I was feeling like a slacker with my New Year’s resolution to have no resolutions. Like most New Year’s resolutions, was this resolution only meant to last two weeks?
By the middle of January most people have in some way faltered on their best intended New Year’s resolutions. This year, who can blame us – with Omicron surging as we enter into year three of this life altering pandemic, horrendous winter weather, the impending climatic apocalypse reminders in the hot new movie “Don’t Look Up,” and whatever other flavor of doom and gloom is all over the media.
I thought I would immunize myself against this trend of failed New Year’s resolutions by just avoiding the New Year’s resolve to do better, be better, or in some way remediate a perceived personal failing. Instead, I made a resolution to set no resolutions (or even any goals for 2022). Yet just yesterday, while floating around the pool in my warm winter hang, I started to wonder if I was becoming a “slacker.”
Maybe this resolution busting “slacker” concern has more to do with where I am living these days. Due to increasingly unreliable internet at my place in Alaska, I had to find somewhere else to accommodate my pandemic virtual life requirements. I figured, why not live where it’s warm in the winter. So, now I’m around all these other “snow birds” who are enjoying a conventional “retired” existence. Theoretically, I’m not too young to be retired (my parents retired at my current age), but I don’t feel like I need to retire and how does one retire from doing what they love anyhow? Plus, we have had many people teach for Cheetah over the past two decades as their “retirement gig” – I am now the perfect age to be one of Cheetah’s teachers. Retirement contemplations aside, is it possible for me to live a year with no resolutions or goals, and if doing this, does it mean I am a “slacker?”
In the first two weeks of January, still in the honey moon phase of having no resolutions for my New Years resolution, I noticed I was enjoying the moment more in my resolve to not strive for any improvements. While out walking the dog, I relished just being out walking the dog rather than trying to keep my heart rate in the fat burning zone or making it around the block a couple minutes faster than the day before. (What really put the spring in my step though was getting a text warning me of an impending snow storm I was missing back in Alaska). Before dinner the other night, I realized my New Year’s resolution of no resolutions meant I could help myself to a second helping of my favorite comfort food, mashed potatoes. But much to my surprise, as I immensely enjoyed dinner eating foods I loved, my first small helping of my favorite comfort food felt like it was plenty. Maybe I’m onto something here resolving not to have any resolutions.
I’m recommitting to my New Year’s resolution of no resolutions. It has its own unique benefits, even with my concerns about becoming a “slacker.”
“The first thing my boss said when I told him I was interested in getting my PMP certification was that if I was going to do it, he’d heard Cheetah Learning was the best.”