No Resolutions This Year — Just Goals

Jen 2.0 loading…

Photo by Viridiana Rivera on Pexels

The first time I wrote New Year’s resolutions was in January 1980, when I was four years old. It appears that I dictated my resolutions to my Mom, who transcribed them, but I can’t help but suspect that my mother had some influence over these initial resolutions. (The telltale sign of parental input: resolutions like, “Brush my teeth every day,” “Not too much TV,” “Don’t grab toys away from M [my younger sister],” and “Go to bed when Mommy wants me to.”)

Some of my four-year-old resolutions, however, appear to have originated from me and ring true today: “Play by myself sometimes,” “Don’t worry too much about dogs that are far away,” and “If your friends start getting mean, you should tell your mother” still apply.

“Don’t worry too much about dogs that are far away” still applies.

In my thirties, New Year’s resolutions morphed into a very elaborate and time-consuming annual ritual, thanks to courses I was taking with a women’s empowerment life coach. This life coach used, and suggested, the book Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever by Jinny Ditzler. (I actually used this earlier edition of the book.)

Every year, in addition to reading Your Best Year Yet! — an entire BOOK about this process — doing the Best Year Yet! process also involved completing writing exercises, such a very elaborate inventory of your past year and your goals and values, and even drawing pie charts, before doing the penultimate exercise of crafting your goals for the year.

At the end of every December, in preparation for the new year, I’d dedicate days at a time to doing the Best Year Yet! process. Eventually though, self-help lost its sheen, and spending days on my goals for the year (most of which, as I recall, never materialized) became way too laborious. So I stopped.

I can’t remember the last time I made any sort of New Year’s resolutions — it’s been years. But this year, in a very simplified, pared-down manner, I’m setting some goals for 2025. Instead of the Best Year Yet! formula of TEN goals, in keeping it simple — and achievable — I only have three.

These are my three goals for 2025 — and the (simple!) tools I’m using to keep myself accountable.