Replace New Year Resolutions with Themes and Seasons for 2026

Discussing how to use Themes which encourage our curiosity and play to our strengths to be the New in our New Year rather than use resolutions which try to force us to be someone and something we're not.

Transcript

Setting Themes and Seasons for 2024

The New Year is usually when we look back at the year behind us with gratitude and regret while making resolutions on how we're going to move forward from here, usually by doing things differently. New Year's resolutions are the butt of a million jokes because they tend to be so grand and unattainable, we can't hold the course for more than a couple of weeks and then we chuck the entire enterprise, going back to the way we've been doing things all along. Or the benefits and rewards too few and far between, even non-existent because we're supposed to just be grateful for the existential "improvement" in our lives, which we can't sustain in the way the resolution requires.

Beyond this, the most common resolutions stem from "should's." As in, we should weigh a certain amount to be happy, we should do more of this or that, we should have this much money or this type of success, we should socialize more, pay attention to ourselves more, work less or more and on and on. These feel like common sense, not necessarily because they are, but because we are immersed in these messages in all aspects of our lives from social interactions to TV/Movies/Streaming to social media.

The thing to know about "should's" is they aren't common, nor necessarily sense, and they aren't really about us or our well-being. They are the messages from others about what is considered right or best or normative (for a variety of reasons, most of which are none of these things) and we have been told adjusting ourselves to these norms will have positive effects for us. They are like mass manufactured clothing which is advertised as being intrinsically fabulous and therefore able to make us look fabulous if we purchase and wear it. Reality meets the road when we try each piece on. It can be confusing to find we don't look fabulous in a certain piece of clothing and cause us to try and search out what is wrong or even what we have done wrong to cause a non-fabulous outcome. It is only when we realize we have misunderstood the purpose of the clothing that things begin to fall into place. The clothing may or may not be fabulous, but its purpose is to be purchased, not to improve us. The advertising is enticement, not sound advice. Our looks are secondary and only as important as they cause us to return for more purchases.

Resolutions of this nature are like a block of stone you're meant to make into a sculpture. The real you is trapped inside all of the excess, the bad, and the useless. So, you remove and refine, taking sharp and blunt instruments to yourself, scrubbing with abrasives, forcing and deconstructing until you have beauty and perfection. Just ignore the fact most artistic and revered sculptures are about violent acts or violent people...

Now this isn't to say the process of recalibrating for a new year is bad. New Year's celebrations and plan setting are really a way in which we come into relationship with ourselves. This moment of quiet when all the hullabaloo is done, and we are preparing for a new year is when we reaffirm who we are now and the life we desire to create. How we identify in this moment matters because it influences the choices we make and the experiences we will have. If we relinquish our power to others, accept the "should's" at face value and as more important than our own knowing and wisdom, then we will set goals which do not match what we need, which set us up to fail, which reiterate our inabilities and reconfirm our brokenness. We will once again become an example of all the New Year's resolution jokes and gain a bit more brokenness for our trouble.

Instead, what I recommend is a more curious, exploratory, and self-affirming approach. One which gives tons of positive feedback and encouragement while engaging our positive creativity. 

For the New Year, why not pick a Theme.

Themes can be the subject we want to explore, the thing we find relevant, the means by which we can steer our year or the perspective we want to view and evaluate it through.  Rather than setting a singular, specific goal to achieve and forcing ourselves to take on restrictive tasks and steps to achieve it, we can choose to create a beautiful basket where we collect various experiences, skills, knowledge, and habits which are all related to each other and support our unfolding ourselves further into being.

For example, rather than setting a resolution to lose that last 15 pounds, we can have a theme of Positive Body Movement.  Within this theme we can include regular exercise, but also running round after children or playing with the dog at the dog park. We can explore line dancing and pickle ball, going to outdoor music festivals with friends, sledding/tubing on surprise snow days, walking around unexplored areas of our neighborhood to find out what's there and pretty much anything else which might come to mind. 

We're far more likely to do something and repeat it if we enjoy it and it fits into the life we're already living.  And while your logic brain is telling you stories about "You don't so you can't and you won't..." I want you to think about what you can and would do if someone offered you a fully paid trip to the destination of your dreams. You know...Bali – Legoland – Cancun – Greece – a week at the most haunted hotels in the world...  I'm pretty sure most if not all of your objections would disappear and you'd do extraordinary feats of planning, arranging, and managing in order to be available for this situation, all in record time. 

Setting themes allows us to harness this creative ability for our benefit, which therefore benefits everyone around us. It also calls us to participate differently than with resolutions.  

Resolutions tend to have very specific goals and milestones which must be met in a specific order and timeframe. It also is very uneven in its feedback and is a bit like a stoic authority figure who gives us no praise but is quick to punish failure.  Most resolutions are set up to be intrinsically worthy, so doing them is your reward. It's on you to cheer yourself on or reward yourself for each increment achieved, which can feel less than energizing or even double the effort for little return. If you fail, then you get to feel all the negative consequences including a hit to your self-worth and self-esteem, escalation of your negative self-talk, as well as possible light-to-medium negative feedback from family/friends/community which may or may not be couched as encouragement. 

Themes allow for curiosity, exploration, discernment, play, and variable engagement. Within your theme you don't have to have a rigid daily schedule if that doesn't work for you, therefore you can't fail at keeping one. If you are allowed to explore many different ways to participate in the year's theme, then it's more than likely you can find something each day or even each mood which fits in and allows you to be more fully the way you want to be for this year.

Themes also allow for partial credit. Resolutions are often set up as a binary, either succeed or fail. So as Yoda says, "Do or Do Not. There is no try." But in a theme, trying is a big part of it. And if you tried something, did part of something or repeated something to get a little better at it, that all counts. In fact, there are scheduling calendars and planners set up for Theme tracking where, rather than check boxes, there are circles with lines through them. So you can literally give yourself partial credit for the things you've decided to do within your theme by filling in part of a circle and then count up how much participation, practice, exploration and unfolding you're doing through the year.

This changes things from subtraction of self, to adding. Rather than taking things away from yourself, you're nourishing, supporting and unfolding yourself or at least figuring out ways to do so which work best for you.

Themes also can be subdivided into Seasons. As adults these two things are both true simultaneously: A) A year is a tiny fraction of time and too little to get everything done we need or want to do and B) A year is an unholy long amount of time to keep focused on one goal and not be distracted, diverted, or just give up. With themes we can take things in smaller chunks which makes both progress and feedback more immediate and satisfying. 

Seasons don't have to follow the calendar, although this can be an easy way to keep track of things. For years now I've thought of Winter as "The Winter of My Disco Tent" which helps keep me in a good frame of mind during overly dark days. This year I've also made it my season of Angeline Boulley and so I'll be reading one of his novels each month and digging into the literary criticism about them. (I'm a book nerd. It's what we do.) But you can make a season be anything you want. And you can make them as short or as long as you want. 

You can make them a 6-month moratorium on something which annoys you, for example. It's not unusual for people to do this with social media, but it could also be anything online like movies or podcasts or relatives. You can have something be monthly, so you try 12 new things this year. Or if you have 3 different directions you want to go in for some aspect of your life (or all of it), try each one for four months and see which one is best at the end of the year. The answer may be 'all,' it may be 'none' or there may be a clear winner, but no matter what, you will be more than you were before, which is a huge win. 

New Year's Themes and Seasons are wonderful things. They can help guide us through a year full of surprises and challenges, help us focus on what is important in a tsunami of competing claims on our time and energy, and support us in achieving long term goals. They can be the angel on our shoulder giving us permission to take care of ourselves. They can support our prioritizing a healthy relationship with ourselves, which gives us the firm foundation to create good and healthy relationships with others. They can challenge us to find our edges, to find new aspects of ourselves, to dig deep and become more than we have ever been. 

One thing to keep in mind is all of these may mean going within ourselves rather than moving outside. The edges we need to find might be in the area of self-care, refraining from taking on new challenges which distract us from our true needs, or coming into a deep relationship with our emotions. The area we need to dig deeply into might be the fear which causes us to dig deep everywhere but our own heart. Becoming more than we have ever been might fall into the realm of gifting ourselves with the graceful and loving parenting we didn't receive when we were a child. We might be challenged to become our own white knight and save us from a life of "should's." From there, the next aspects of ourselves can manifest and unfold.