New Year’s resolutions don’t change anything until we change ourselves

By David McElroy · January 1, 2014

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I’m sure they’re useful for some people, but they don’t make any difference to me. I think I’ve finally figured out why.

Resolutions seem to focus on a desired outcome or behavior rather than the reason behind the behavior. Just wanting to change your outcomes isn’t enough. You have to change your decisions that have produced the outcomes you’re trying to eliminate.

I find it really easy to list the obvious things I’d like to change about myself. I’d like to drop the weight that I’ve gained in the last five years. I’d like to move to a home I like better and is more suited to me. I’d like to make more money and do work that’s fulfilling. I’d like to keep my house cleaner. I’d like to have a romantic relationship that I’m happy with and is emotionally healthy. I’d like to find the motivation to complete the film projects I’ve been working on.

This isn’t rocket science. I can make a nice list of them. I can even promise that I’m going to do them all. But that doesn’t work for me. That approach also doesn’t seem to work for others. Why not?

I think it’s because we fail to look at the reasons we do the things we do.

It doesn’t do me a bit of good to swear I’m going to use willpower to force myself to quit eating sweets and exercise more unless I look at why I’ve made the behavioral decisions that led me to gain weight. It doesn’t do me any good to resolve to make more money unless I ask myself why I’ve done the things I’ve done in the last decade that have led me to squander my talent and opportunities. And so forth.

I’m where I am in life because of the decisions I’ve made. Just like a lot of people, I was saddled with some really poor childhood programming that I didn’t understand for many years, but I can’t blame that forever. As an adult, I have to take responsibility for changing the things in myself that have led to places I sometimes don’t want to be. But in too many cases, I’ve been willing to complain about the results I’ve been getting without changing the decisions that create the outcomes.

I started changing some of my decisions a few months ago. Some of those decisions would seem trivial to others, but they’re big deals to me. (Anyone who’s known me well would be shocked to see me take a job that requires me to go to an office and work for others, for instance, even though this is typical for most people.)

I would love to say that every decision has led to immediate results, but that’s not the case. Change takes longer than I’d like it to take. But I can either make decisions and count on gradual change or I can keep wishing and hoping for magical change because I put something on a list and “resolved” to do it. I know which one seems like the approach that might bring results.

I’ve been doing some things lately that I didn’t want to do. For instance, I’ve done some work that I didn’t really enjoy, but it’s the first step in pushing myself in new directions to make myself more financially stable and prosperous. I’ve changed the way I handle some relationships in my life. I’m more willing to make painful decisions to exclude people from my life who want an unequal relationship that I’m not willing to be part of.

These might not seem like big deals to you. The other decisions I’ve made might not sound like big deals to you, either. It might sound more interesting to make a list and promise to “make more money” and “have a good romantic relationship.” But I believe that making the more mundane decisions will do far more to produce positive outlines than any list of resolutions will.

If I’m still in the same place next year that I am today, it will be because I haven’t continued to make decisions every day that make me a better person, not because I didn’t make a list of grand outcomes that I promise to somehow fulfill.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who successfully uses resolutions each year, but maybe those people exist. For me, though, it’s not about the list of outcomes. It’s about making decisions each day that make me the man I should have made myself years ago.

Will that lead me to where I want to be? I can’t say for sure. Ask me in a year. Ask the people in my life in five years. If my outcomes are what I want them to be by then, it will be because of some terribly mundane decisions I’m making today. I have faith that it will be worth it.

At this point, I have to sell myself — the changes I’m making — to other people and see who wants to be a part of my future and has faith in me. That can be much more exciting than making resolutions each year.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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