Resolution perception

During my recent trip to the beach, I heard a very good commentary on television about New Years resolutions. This was on some sports show on ESPN and the guy was a radio commentator. I didn’t pay enough attention to know who he is, or I else would give him credit for inspiring me to write this.

He initially caught my attention with the next few comments.

‘People are always worrying about what they’re gonna drop or eliminate from their lives for their New Year resolution. Why is this? Why do people think they have to completely cut out a habit or feature from their lives in order to improve it? Or, quit something? Now, the quitting smoking I can understand. But as for the rest….’

‘Instead, why not add something to your life, to that which already exists? Improve on it. Instead of quitting drinking, start drinking a finer wine. Add something. In your venture to lose weight, assign the newly devoted workout time to also become family time. Take your family with you and use this time to everyone’s advantage.’

This hit me like a ton of bricks. I could sit here right now and incorporate this with my own resolutions. We’re ultimately so concerned with the elimination of certain things, habits, features, etc. that we usually only see one path to take to accomplish our goals. Maybe enhancing the things we want to eliminate IS the way to go. Maybe, just maybe – there’s a chance of this working. Maybe there really IS more than one way of “getting there”.