Having More Than One Resolution Per Year Is Useless

Like many, I grew up with a lot of expectations behind my back.

Have you noticed that whenever you go through an emotionally difficult episode in your life, the people who gave you a hard time shape your personality? Pay attention to the voices in your mind the next time you’re ready to react, notice how they're someone else's voice—and not yours.

When we were still children, such voices shaped us. And because we grew up with them, they became so familiar to us that we now confuse them as being our own. The remarks people made about our bodies, our manners, how much we sucked in comparison to some other kid, why we should be like such and such, what we should strive for, et cetera.

It always originates from outside of us, and with time, we associate all these flaws as being us.

I believe that inherently, we’re all great at something.

We’re all gifted in one way or another, and we all have something to offer to the world. It’s just that, as we keep going through life—our parents’ expectations from us, the societal norms, the endless noise from the world—it all interferes with our gift.

And unfortunately, before we’re able to firmly stand on our feet and think critically—we’re made to believe that we’re powerless cogs in this giant machine called "modern life," and we accept that as a truth because we're so busy surviving, we don't have enough energy.

I also believe that human beings, at some level, are all good by nature. Yes, some of us are morons for the most part. But deep inside, when the right conditions are in place, we’ve all been surprised by the goodness some people we thought were ‘evil’ could express.

Perhaps this goodness makes us want to help those around us, to make them feel better. And generally, we do it by sharing what we discover and by giving advice. For the most part obviously, people don’t listen, and it makes us sad—for them, but more importantly, for us.

And this is when the question of expectations completes its full circle. People expect from us, and we expect from people. We’re sad because there’s so much that’s being expected from us, but also, because people rarely meet our expectations.

Like many, I want to improve myself. I’m obsessed with working things out, and making the best out of every situation. Progress is exciting. We're wired to grow, evolve, and to make sure we keep moving in this direction—pleasurable chemicals are released to strengthen the pattern.

I’ve started most years with all these resolutions in order to enhance this desire for progress—and like most people, around the end of the first week of January—it felt like too much. While I worked at making my life ‘better,’ my soul wasn’t happy about it.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that your best output comes when you don’t expect much. The more childlike we are in our approach, the more exciting, thrilling and fruitful the process of creation is.

The opposite is valid too.

The more expectations and seriousness we put into our work, the more complicated, boring, synthetic it is—you know, kind of like that GMO feeling. And the worst part is that people don’t connect with it no matter how sexy it looks like.

You definitely don’t need to be a genius to know that people are pretty unhappy today. We have the nicest of suits, phones, cars, people. But, we’re all going through the motions. We’re all pursuing things we know will never get us the peace we’re looking for. Yet we keep running because what else can we do about it? Well, nothing—until we stop living by others’ expectations.

We’re all unique. Not in terms of our fundamental components, we all have brains, arms and everything else—but in terms of how those components interact with each other, how much we’ve learned to use them, and what patterns we’re better at. Our fingerprints show us that we're not unique because of a specific pattern, but because of how these ordinary patterns combine together.

Combine your skills, knowledge, experiences—and you have you—a unique person with unique abilities (or at least combination of abilities) and therefore a unique contribution to the world.

We’re unhappy, unhealthy, and unable to contribute like we’re supposed to because we allow the world to dictate us what to do. We know what to do, deep inside, if we just allow ourselves a break—what we are a master at will come out.

And because having too many unrealistic resolutions for myself, aka expectations, have brought me nowhere closer to the joy of growing up as a person—I’ve stopped having them. When something doesn't move, we call it 'dead'. When it does move, we call it 'alive'.

And we are alive because we’re always moving and changing, this is what living means—and so, the best resolution we can make is moving in the direction, the one that feels right to our heart at the moment.

There’s no need to wait for the next year, or for the weekend to pass, or for the next month. I know that we’re so busy nowadays that the only time we remember how fast time is passing is when the year changes. But. Wherever you are and whatever you feel right now—make the resolution to keep moving in that direction.

This is what will make you happy. This is what your soul is yearning for. And your personal happiness is so much more worth it than attaining whatever is expected from you. Why? Because no one’s validation about you can possibly be better than your validation about yourself.

Ultimately, you are the one who’ll be living the rest of your life with yourself. We come alone in this world, and we leave alone. Why try so hard to impress others? Why feel guilty and lose our sleep because we stood up for ourselves? Why give free space in our mind to people whose opinions we couldn’t care less at the end of the day?

The old ways don’t work anymore. We’ve clearly seen this in the last two years. Now, it’s time to change our approach, stop giving more credit than is needed to others, and start paying more attention to us, to what we feel and need, to what we want, where we want to go and more importantly—how we want to live our lives.

And unlike yearly resolutions that give you headaches, this is a direction you take. One that won’t last for the next couple of months but for your lifetime. One that’ll make you grow, and bring you closer to your truth.