The New Year Resolution

If you are active on Goodreads and have gone through its feed in the last couple of days, I’m sure you wouldn’t have missed the numerous updates of “Goodreads 2016 Reading Challenge”.

If you don’t know about it, it is a feature on Goodreads wherein you can take a target of reading a particular number of books in a year. It then measures your monthly progress against your target and tell you how many books you should read so that you are on track to meet your annual target.

The updates read like this . . .

Dion Sagirang wants to read 30 books in the 2016 Reading Challenge

Rajesh wants to read50 books in the 2016 Reading Challenge

Utpal wants to read 123books in the 2016 Reading Challenge

A similar thing is happening in the Gym which I go (try to go, to be honest). It used to be an isolated place, more equipment than people. But since the magical date of first of January, there is a visible buzz there, with humans of all shapes and sizes making a visit there.

It is also the fact that for most of us this buzz will fade out within a month or two. This is what happened last year, and the year before that.

But point is not the efficacy of such resolutions, the point is the ability of men (& of course, women) to reboot themselves just with a notional concept of ‘date’.

The date of January the first hasn’t changed anything. The sun will still rise in the east. The days will continue to follow their cycle. People around us are going to be same.

Nothing changes, everything is exactly the same.

But this psychological impact of ‘new’ does something on our mind, refreshes ourselves and makes us bold enough to face all those demons which we had locked and chained and hidden in the deepest of the closets.

I think this is what separates the greatness hidden in us from the mediocrity that we usually find lurking in us -the ability to reboot and refresh ourselves as regularly as possible.

And amazing things will happen if we can instill this ability of renewing ourselves without waiting for a full year. Every month? Every week? There is no limit. The successful people, I believe see every day, as a new beginning, leaving the failure of yesterday behind and focusing on the day ahead.

And then those who lived by this mantra not only every day but every second -every moment of their life, have ended up in the annals of the history as legends.