December 31st is one of my favorite days of the year. The air is cold and crisp and it smells like winter. Christmas lights are still strung happily around bare branches of trees that look like they’ve been flipped upside down to show their roots. There’s a flutter in the air as everyone rushes about to get ready for the new year, making resolutions, setting out horderves, letting champagne chill in big buckets of ice. It’s one of the few times in our lives that we celebrate the day changing from 11:59PM to 12:00AM with kisses and cheering and song singing. And then it’s a whole new year. New possibilities. New opportunities. It’s just new all around.
A new year brings new fun and exciting resolutions that help us become the best people we want to be. I don’t actually like to make resolutions most years, though. When you make resolutions, missing a day of exercise or eating a French fry, or messing up whatever else you resolved to do, can stop your entire year from moving forward in a positive way. Instead, I like to use January 1st as the beginning of a new don’t-break-the-chain goal.
For example, say I wanted to write for at least one hour every day. Instead of resolving to write that long every day, I would create a chain. In the past when I was into cutting out paper strips and taping, I would create actual chains, but now I just use my phone or a calendar. Ah adulthood. So, by making a chain, I can mark every day that I write one hour without feeling really awful and discouraged for missing a day.
Then comes my favorite part of a chain goal. For each landmark I pass without breaking the chain, I reward myself with little prizes! If I don’t break the chain for a week, maybe I could go see a movie. If I don’t break the chain for a month, I could buy that coloring book I’ve been eyeing at the bookstore. If I don’t break the chain for two months, that’s a whole new outfit! It makes resolutions a lot more fun and much easier to continue, because if you break the chain, you just start it again.
So this December 31st, I hope you all have a wonderful day. I hope you celebrate with family and friends and eat and drink and be merry. And, if you’ve decided to change something this year, whether it’s a resolution, a don’t-break-the-chain goal, or something else entirely, I hope all of your goals make you feel like the wonderful people I know you are in 2016. Happy New Year!
