Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Einstein

Turns out most people, including me, have been insane about New Year’s Resolutions in the past years. Ever year, I- like many others- make promises to myself which fall through within the first month of the year.

This year, I’m going to do it again. Except this time, I’m making a few changes.

I started out this week by thinking about what I care about most. The three most important things in my life right now are Health, Education, and Family. Naturally, I’ve centered my own goals around these three things.

I always do that. What’s different? I thought about it, and I fundamentally think there are only 3 reasons why you can’t follow through on a resolution:

1. It doesn’t matter to you enough. We set goals based on what other people want from us. This year, I’m going to resolve to do things I care about. This is harder than you think. It’s sometimes impossible to seperate expectations from personal goals.
2. It’s not practical. Setting unrealistic goals is easy. In fact, it gives you an easy way out; once you start falling behind on that running schedule or you try to quit cold on a bad habit too quickly, it’s often easy to abandon ship. Each goal has to be within reach, and focused. Once you go back on one promise you made to yourself, it spreads like poison.
3. You can’t hold yourself accountable. Lying to ourselves is surprisingly easy. I find that most people will delay things because no one is watching them. Human nature, I guess. This often means you can measure specific goals.

Keeping that in mind, I resolve:

1. Health. To run 700 miles this year. That’s about 2 miles a day, giving me some room for exceptions (practicality). My dad just did it this last year. In fact, to truly make sure I’m hitting the point home, I’ll be keeping a public speadsheet of how much I’ve run.
2. Education. To read 40 books this year. Easy to track, and that’s less than a book a week (practical) since I know this year is going to be busy and full of surprises. Again, I’ll be keeping a public spreadsheet of which books I’ve read.
3. Family. Simply call my parents once a day when I’m back to college. Seems simple, but it’s something I definitely need to catch up on. I think I can be accountable for this one on my own.

So here’s to hoping I can make a blog post about this one year from today. Here’s to hoping I’m not insane.