I was curious where the idea of making New Year’s Resolutions came from. It didn’t take me long to find out that they actually had a religious underpinning, even in pre-Christian times.
- The Babylonians promised their gods at the start of the year they would return borrowed objects and pay debts.
- Romans promised the god Janus they would do better, too. (And named the first month of the year after him to make sure they remembered.)
Today, most of our resolutions revolve around personal self improvement. The top five resolutions are:
- Lose weight
- Volunteer
- Quit smoking
- Get a better education
- Get a better job
Interestingly, only one of those is oriented toward helping others. Most are self-centered. (At least volunteering to help others is #2.) I wonder if that self-centeredness is part of the problem. We vow to change things we don’t really want to change. I’d almost bet that if we focused on more on helping others, we’d find it easier to make the personal changes we want to make.
The second reason most of us fail to follow through on our resolutions is remembering them. We write them down (maybe) or say them out loud, but don’t do anything else with them. Jonathan Edwards, a New England Puritan, wrote all of his resolutions down (he had 70) and he committed to reading them each week. That was actually part of his first resolution and it was so important to him, it didn’t count as part of the 70.
A couple of his more interesting ones include:
- Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
- Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
- Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.
- Resolved, in narrations never to speak anything but the pure and simple verity (truth).
- Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak.
(If you want to read all 70, you can find them here.)
I haven’t made resolutions the last few years, but I think I’ll try to follow some of those set out by Edwards. Of course, he didn’t try to accomplish everything in one day. He wrote them over two years as he thought of things that would make him a better person. Frankly, I think I need to start where the Babylonian’s did…
Happy New Year!.