New Year's resolutions

I have a lot of posts to catch up on, but they'll have to wait until after I get done with activity days this week.  Part of my activity days will be on New Year's resolutions, and I came across this little talk by Wendy Ulrich that I wanted to share.  I love how she says we should focus on building on our strengths and the legacy we want to leave instead of focusing on our weaknesses.

The Key to Making New Year's Resolutions
It is rumored that most people make New Year’s resolutions and that the most common New Year’s resolution is to lose weight. I have no trouble imagining this as weight loss has been on my resolutions list since, oh, birth! When we focus on tackling weaknesses it is usually because we assume that doing so is the pathway to lasting happiness—or at least a little less shame and guilt.


Current research suggests, however, that tackling weaknesses is only half the battle in getting happier. In fact less than half. The lion’s share of our personal happiness does not come from overcoming weaknesses but from building on strengths.


When our weaknesses keep us from expressing our strengths they are certainly worth working on. But we don’t get happier when hyperfocusing on what is wrong with us gets in the way of developing what is right.


So what’s right with you? What are your talents and gifts? What are the values and character traits you hold dear? What opportunities would you love to jump into? What resources do you have available? In one research study, people who found new and creative ways to express their best character traits each week got a lasting boost to their sense of well-being.


When I organize my goals around the legacy I want to leave and the good I want to do it is a much more energizing and creative process than focusing solely on fixing my flaws. I like the question, “What is the legacy you want to leave?” I do NOT want my legacy to be that I succeeded in losing 20 pounds, 20 times. Much more fun, creative and meaningful to think about talents I want to develop, projects I want to accomplish, or people I want to help.


But even the axiom of “build on your strengths” is only half right. The other half? “Build on your strengths. . . that strengthen others.”


Who do you want to help? What causes matter to you? What human problems most touch your heart? What groups arouse your sense of responsibility?


My daughter, single at 30, spent some anxious moments trying to imagine how her life might unfold if she did not have a family of her own. One of her biggest concerns was how to feel like an honest-to-goodness grownup without a spouse and children to push her into maturity. She concluded that people move out of childhood and into genuine adulthood by serving the rising generation. So she found a rising generation to serve: foster children in need of a loving home.


I frankly thought she was crazy. How would she take care of a needy, probably traumatized foster child while single and in grad school herself? But she went through all the training and certification and started taking in short-term foster children needing emergency placements. She blessed the lives of several children in the process . . . and they blessed hers.


So when you make the list of your New Year’s resolutions, think about the legacy you want to leave. Then:  First, consider only tackling those weaknesses that are interfering with that legacy.


Second, consider who you want to leave that legacy to: the rising generation of children, youth, new workers, young professionals, new members, first-generation college students, or new leaders? Members of your family or extended family or deceased family? People who are weak or disadvantaged in a way that you have special empathy for?


Finally, consider what the strengths are you want to contribute to those people or groups. What skills will you hone this year? What craft will you improve in? What opportunities will you court or take advantage of? What talents or gifts will you explore or develop?


These become resolutions you can get your teeth into. Achieving them will not only bless the world but bless you—and with something far more enduring and significant than a smaller waistline!